Question

I have seen the following snippet in GoogleAnalytics’ Android library code:

private class TrackerThread extends Thread {

TrackerThread() {
  super("TrackerThread");
}

/**
 * Simply pull Runnables from the Queue trackerQueue and call their run
 * methods, blocking until there is something in the Queue.
 */
@Override
public void run() {
  while (true) {
    Runnable r;
    try {
      r = trackerQueue.take();
      r.run();
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
      Log.i(LOG_TAG, e.toString());
    }
  }
}

}

My question is, executing a Thread with a while(true) is a nice idea in a mobile environment? Will it leak the battery polling constantly or does Android have some method for optimizing that?

Thanks

Answer 1

As stated in the comments, run() method of these Runnables “blocking until there is something in the Queue”. So there is no problem with this loop: when nothing to do it will not iterate, it will be blocked.