Question

I would like to invoke heavy duty method dowork on a separate thread and kill it if its taking longer than 3 seconds. Is there any problem with the following code?

class Class1
{
    /// <summary>
    /// The main entry point for the application.
    /// </summary>
    [STAThread]
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("starting new thread");

        Thread t = new Thread(new ThreadStart(dowork));
        t.Start();

        DateTime start = DateTime.Now;
        TimeSpan span = DateTime.Now.Subtract(start);

        bool wait = true;
        while (wait == true)
        {
            if (span.Seconds > 3)
            {
                t.Abort();
                wait = false;
            }
            span = DateTime.Now.Subtract(start);
        }

        Console.WriteLine("ending new thread after seconds = {0}", span.Seconds);
        Console.WriteLine("all done");
        Console.ReadLine();

    }

    static void dowork()
    {

        Console.WriteLine("doing heavy work inside hello");
        Thread.Sleep(7000);
        Console.WriteLine("*** finished**** doing heavy work inside hello");
    }
}

Answer 1

If it were me, I’d use the Thread.Join() overload that takes a milliseconds parameter. (Or the one that takes a TimeSpan.) It’s cleaner and involves fewer lines of code.

t.Start();

if (!t.Join(3000))
    t.Abort();

Or, like Matti said, put the timing logic inside threaded process and have it self-destruct.