what is the best way to stop a thread in java?

Question

I would like to stop a thread in mid execution. From reading around, I am of the thought I will have to check a local variable to determine if the thread should continue or clean up and exit run(). Any ideas of cleanly implementing this?

Answer 1

Often a way to do this is create a boolean volatile member variable, perhaps called "stopThread". The thread periodically polls this variable to see if it should terminate.

Answer 2

You could use the interrupt method. You could do some clean up before exiting the thread. A simple tutorial is here