java - How to stop a thread by another thread?

Question

I have some struggle with threads in Java, I have three threads - thread1, thread2, and thread3. Those are doing some task when it started, I want to stop these two threads by thread1. I put thread1 for sleep(500), then I stop the both threads, but the process of two threads are still running. Do you have any idea how to do this?

Answer 1

How're you attempting to stop them? Thread.stop? Be warned that this method is deprecated.

Instead, look into using some sort of flag for thread 1 to communicate to thread 2 and 3 that they should stop. In fact, you could probably use interrupts.

Below, Thread.interrupt is used to implement the coordination.

final Thread subject1 = new Thread(new Runnable() {

  public void run() {
    while (!Thread.interrupted()) {
      Thread.yield();
    }
    System.out.println("subject 1 stopped!");
  }
});
final Thread subject2 = new Thread(new Runnable() {

  public void run() {
    while (!Thread.interrupted()) {
      Thread.yield();
    }
    System.out.println("subject 2 stopped!");
  }
});
final Thread coordinator = new Thread(new Runnable() {

  public void run() {
    try {
      Thread.sleep(500);
    } catch (InterruptedException ex) { }
    System.out.println("coordinator stopping!");
    subject1.interrupt();
    subject2.interrupt();
  }
});
subject1.start();
subject2.start();
coordinator.start();

---

Alternatively, you could also use a volatile boolean (or AtomicBoolean) as means of communicating. Atomic access provided by volatile and java.util.concurrent.atomic.* allow you to ensure mutation of the flag is seen by the subject threads.

final AtomicBoolean running = new AtomicBoolean(true);

final ExecutorService subjects = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(2);
subjects.submit(new Runnable() {

  public void run() {
    while (running.get()) {
      Thread.yield();
    }
    System.out.println("subject 1 stopped!");
  }
});
subjects.submit(new Runnable() {

  public void run() {
    while (running.get()) {
      Thread.yield();
    }
    System.out.println("subject 2 stopped!");
  }
});
final ScheduledExecutorService coordinator = Executors.newSingleThreadScheduledExecutor();
coordinator.schedule(new Runnable() {

  public void run() {
    System.out.println("coordinator stopping!");
    running.set(false);
    subjects.shutdown();
    coordinator.shutdown();
  }
}, 500, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);

Similarly, you could opt to, rather than use AtomicBoolean, use a field such as:

static volatile boolean running = true;

---

Better yet, if you take advantage of ExecutorServices, you can also program similar code as follows:

final ExecutorService subjects = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(2);
subjects.submit(new Runnable() {

  public void run() {
    while (!Thread.interrupted()) {
      Thread.yield();
    }
    System.out.println("subject 1 stopped!");
  }
});
subjects.submit(new Runnable() {

  public void run() {
    while (!Thread.interrupted()) {
      Thread.yield();
    }
    System.out.println("subject 2 stopped!");
  }
});
final ScheduledExecutorService coordinator = Executors.newSingleThreadScheduledExecutor();
coordinator.schedule(new Runnable() {

  public void run() {
    System.out.println("coordinator stopping!");
    subjects.shutdownNow();
    coordinator.shutdown();
  }
}, 500, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);

This takes advantage of the fact that ThreadPoolExecutor.shutdownNow interrupts its worker threads in an attempt to signal shutdown.

---

Running any example, the output should be something to the effect of:

C:devscrap>javac CoordinationTest.java

C:devscrap>java CoordinationTest
coordinator stopping!
subject 1 stopped!
subject 2 stopped!

Note the last two lines can come in either order.