Question

I want to stop a running thread immediately. Here is my code:

Class A :

public class A() {
    public void methodA() {
        For (int n=0;n<100;n++) {
        //Do something recursive
        }
        //Another for-loop here

        //A resursive method here

        //Another for-loop here

        finishingMethod();        
    }    
}

Class B:

public class B() {
    public void runEverything() {
        Runnable runnable = new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                try {
                    Thread.sleep(1000);
                    A a = new A();
                    a.methodA();
                } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        };
       Thread thread = new Thread(runnable);
       thread.start();
    }

My problem is that i need to be able to stop the thread in Class B even before the thread is finished. I’ve tried interrupt() method, but that doesn’t stop my thread. I’ve also heard about using shared variable as a signal to stop my thread, but I think with long recursive and for-loop in my process, shared-variable will not be effective.

Any idea ?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Thread.interrupt will not stop your thread (unless it is in the sleep, in which case the InterruptedException will be thrown). Interrupting basically sends a message to the thread indicating it has been interrupted but it doesn’t cause a thread to stop immediately.

When you have long looping operations, using a flag to check if the thread has been cancelled is a standard approach. Your methodA can be modified to add that flag, so something like:

// this is a new instance variable in `A`
private volatile boolean cancelled = false;

// this is part of your methodA
for (int n=0;n<100;n++) {
  if ( cancelled ) {
    return; // or handle this however you want
  }    
}

// each of your other loops should work the same way

Then a cancel method can be added to set that flag

public void cancel() {
  cancelled = true;   
}

Then if someone calls runEverything on B, B can then just call cancel on A (you will have to extract the A variable so B has a reference to it even after runEverything is called.