Question

I have a scenario where I have one thread that loops between waiting and executing a task. However, I would like to interrupt the wait for the thread (skip the rest of the wait if you will) and continue on to doing the task.

Anyone have any ideas how this could be done?

Answer 1

This is what Thread.interrupt is for:

import java.util.Date;


public class Test {

    public static void main(String [] args) {
        Thread t1 = new Thread(){
            public void run(){
                System.out.println(new Date());
                try {
                    Thread.sleep(10000); // sleep for 10 seconds.
                } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                    System.out.println("Sleep interrupted");
                }
                System.out.println(new Date());
            }
        };

        t1.start();
        try {
            Thread.sleep(2000); // sleep for 2 seconds.
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();  
        }
        t1.interrupt();
    }
}

Thread t1 will only sleep for 2 seconds, since the main thread interrupts it. Keep in mind that this will interrupt many blocking operations such as IO.