Question

I have a thread in which the read() method of an InputStream is called in a loop. When there are no more bytes to read, the stream will block until new data arrives.

If I call close() on the InputStream from a different thread, the stream gets closed, but the blocked read() call still remains blocked. I would assume that the read() method should now return with a value of -1 to indicate the end of the stream, but it does not. Instead, it stays blocked for several more minutes until a tcp timeout occurs.

How do I unblock the close() call?

Edit:

Apparently, the regular JRE will throw a SocketException immediately when the stream or socket the blocking read() call corresponds to is close()‘d. The Android Java runtime which I am using, however, will not.

Any hints on a solution for the Android environment would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Only call read() when there is data available.

Do something like that:

    while( flagBlock )
    {
        if( stream.available() > 0 )
        {
            stream.read( byteArray );
        }
    }

set the flagBlock to stop the reading.