Timer in Java Thread

A few errors in your code snippet:

• You extend the Thread class, which is not really good practice
• You have a Timer within a Thread? That doesnt make sense as the a Timer runs on its own Thread.

You should rather (when/where necessary), implement a Runnable see here for a short example, however I cannot see the need for both a Thread and Timer in the snippet you gave.

Please see the below example of a working Timer which will simply increment the counter by one each time it is called (every 3seconds):

import java.util.Timer;
import java.util.TimerTask;

public class Test {

    static int counter = 0;

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        TimerTask timerTask = new TimerTask() {

            @Override
            public void run() {
                System.out.println("TimerTask executing counter is: " + counter);
                counter++;//increments the counter
            }
        };

        Timer timer = new Timer("MyTimer");//create a new Timer

        timer.scheduleAtFixedRate(timerTask, 30, 3000);//this line starts the timer at the same time its executed
    }
}

Addendum:

I did a short example of incorporating a Thread into the mix. So now the TimerTask will merely increment counter by 1 every 3 seconds, and the Thread will display counters value sleeping for 1 seconds every time it checks counter (it will terminate itself and the timer after counter==3):

import java.util.Timer;
import java.util.TimerTask;

public class Test {

    static int counter = 0;
    static Timer timer;

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        //create timer task to increment counter
        TimerTask timerTask = new TimerTask() {

            @Override
            public void run() {
                // System.out.println("TimerTask executing counter is: " + counter);
                counter++;
            }
        };

        //create thread to print counter value
        Thread t = new Thread(new Runnable() {

            @Override
            public void run() {
                while (true) {
                    try {
                        System.out.println("Thread reading counter is: " + counter);
                        if (counter == 3) {
                            System.out.println("Counter has reached 3 now will terminate");
                            timer.cancel();//end the timer
                            break;//end this loop
                        }
                        Thread.sleep(1000);
                    } catch (InterruptedException ex) {
                        ex.printStackTrace();
                    }
                }
            }
        });

        timer = new Timer("MyTimer");//create a new timer
        timer.scheduleAtFixedRate(timerTask, 30, 3000);//start timer in 30ms to increment  counter

        t.start();//start thread to display counter
    }
}