Question

I have a class XYZ which extends Thread and it is also a singleton (Yes. My application needs that).

In the run method, I have something like this:

public void run() {
    service.start();
}

The time it takes for service.start() is huge.
Also, my application will not always need the thread to be run but can’t decide in advance so while launching the application I am starting this thread.

Now, when application doesn’t need the thread, it gets completed very quickly and all I need to do is wait for thread to die.

I tried to use stop() method but came to know that it is deprecated.

Answer 1

stop has been deprecated a long time ago and should not be used. Thread termination is a cooperative process in Java (i.e. the interrupted code must do something when asked to stop, not the interrupting code) – one way is to call thread.interrupt() on the thread you need to interrupt.

You then need to catch the generated interrupted exception in the running thread or check the interrupted status regularly. Once the running thread detects that is should stop what it’s doing, you can then run any cleanup tasks as required and exit whatever you were doing.