multithreading - How to kill a java thread?

Question

I google the solution for killing a java thread. And there exists two solutions:

1. set a flag
2. using Thread.interrupt

But both of them are not suitable for me. In my thread, I call a third-party api which takes a long time to complete. and I want to let the user to cancel this thread if it takes too much time.

So how can I kill this thread ? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Thread.interrupt() is the only safe method which is generally applicable. You can of course use other application-level signals (such as a conditional check on a volatile variable) to self-terminate. Other methods (such as all the deprecated Thread.xx methods) can pollute your application's state in non-deterministic ways, and would require reloading all application state.