Question

In my apps i find the need to have infinite while loops mostly to do some repeated action continuosly unless another event takes place so what i am doing is

while(chkFlag)
{
   //do something here which takes around 30 seconds
}

Then in some other event say a button press to stop the loop i do

chkFlag = false;

Now this does the work but the problem is this does not stop the loop instantaneously as the chkFlag is checked only after the complete execution of the loop takes place. So can anybody please tell me how i can exit a loop instantaneouly based on an event.

Answer 1

The “blocking” code should likely be moved into some kind of worker thread (which can be terminated and/or have the results discarded). If using a BackgroundWorker (recommended, as it makes this simple), there is built-in support to handle a cancel operation.

Then the loop can either be moved inside the BackgroundWorker or the completion (RunWorkerCompleted) event of the worker can trigger the next worker to start (which causes an implicit loop).

Happy coding.

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There are more “aggressive” ways of terminating/signaling a thread; but suggesting these would require more information than present.