multithreading - How to terminate or suspend a Rust thread from another thread?

Question

Editor's note — this example was created before Rust 1.0 and the specific types have changed or been removed since then. The general question and concept remains valid.

I have spawned a thread with an infinite loop and timer inside.

thread::spawn(|| {
    let mut timer = Timer::new().unwrap();
    let periodic = timer.periodic(Duration::milliseconds(200));
    loop {
        periodic.recv();

        // Do my work here
    }
});

After a time based on some conditions, I need to terminate this thread from another part of my program. In other words, I want to exit from the infinite loop. How can I do this correctly? Additionally, how could I to suspend this thread and resume it later?

I tried to use a global unsafe flag to break the loop, but I think this solution does not look nice.

Answer 1

For both terminating and suspending a thread you can use channels.

Terminated externally

On each iteration of a worker loop, we check if someone notified us through a channel. If yes or if the other end of the channel has gone out of scope we break the loop.

use std::io::{self, BufRead};
use std::sync::mpsc::{self, TryRecvError};
use std::thread;
use std::time::Duration;

fn main() {
    println!("Press enter to terminate the child thread");
    let (tx, rx) = mpsc::channel();

    thread::spawn(move || loop {
        println!("Working...");
        thread::sleep(Duration::from_millis(500));
        match rx.try_recv() {
            Ok(_) | Err(TryRecvError::Disconnected) => {
                println!("Terminating.");
                break;
            }
            Err(TryRecvError::Empty) => {}
        }
    });

    let mut line = String::new();
    let stdin = io::stdin();
    let _ = stdin.lock().read_line(&mut line);

    let _ = tx.send(());
}

Suspending and resuming

We use recv() which suspends the thread until something arrives on the channel. In order to resume the thread, you need to send something through the channel; the unit value () in this case. If the transmitting end of the channel is dropped, recv() will return Err(()) - we use this to exit the loop.

use std::io::{self, BufRead};
use std::sync::mpsc;
use std::thread;
use std::time::Duration;

fn main() {
    println!("Press enter to wake up the child thread");
    let (tx, rx) = mpsc::channel();
    thread::spawn(move || loop {
        println!("Suspending...");
        match rx.recv() {
            Ok(_) => {
                println!("Working...");
                thread::sleep(Duration::from_millis(500));
            }
            Err(_) => {
                println!("Terminating.");
                break;
            }
        }
    });

    let mut line = String::new();
    let stdin = io::stdin();
    for _ in 0..4 {
        let _ = stdin.lock().read_line(&mut line);
        let _ = tx.send(());
    }
}

Other tools

Channels are the easiest and the most natural (IMO) way to do these tasks, but not the most efficient one. There are other concurrency primitives which you can find in the std::sync module. They belong to a lower level than channels but can be more efficient in particular tasks.