Threading class implementing alternatives to the deprecated suspend and resume methods

Published on July 17th, 2006 in Java

Finally I came across a project that made heavy use of multithreading. As I wanted to pause and resume one particular thread, I had to use synchronized variables instead of the deprecated suspend and resume methods. I implemented them into my own, clean MyThread class. But since those two, deprecated methods were defined as final methods within the Java framework, I couldn’t override them. So I had to choose other names for them. I went with “pause” and “walk”, pause being pretty self-explanatory. Walk, well uhm, all other words symbolizing movement were unavailable (like continue, run, resume and so on). I know it’s a bad one, but right now, I can’t think of another word symbolizing that meaning, so it’ll work for now. If anyone should have some suggestions, I’m open to renaming that method. I hope this code makes it easier for a few people here, since it makes working with threads a little easier. It’s supposed to provide a base for your threading needs, meaning you can and should extend and modify it to suit your needs. So here’s finally the code:

Update: Thanks to Chad Moore’s suggestion, I changed the name of the “walk” method to proceed.

public class MyThread extends Thread {
    private boolean paused = false;

    public void run() {
         while (true) {
              synchronized (this) {
                   while (paused) {
                        try {
                             //MyThread is waiting
                             wait();
                        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                             e.printStackTrace();
                        }
                   }
              }
    //MyThread is running
    //Do work
    }
}

    public void pause() {
         synchronized (this) {
              paused = true;
         }
    }

    public void proceed() {
         synchronized (this) {
              paused = false;
              this.notify();
         }
    }
}

And here's a little class for testing purposes:

public class MyThread_Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
        MyThread mythread = new MyThread();
        System.out.print("Starting MyThread");
        mythread.start();
        Thread.sleep(4000L);
        System.out.println("Stopping MyThread");
        mythread.pause();
        Thread.sleep(4000L);
        System.out.print("Resuming MyThread");
        mythread.proceed();
    }
}

7 comments

Chad Moore July 18th, 2006

How about “proceed” for a name?

Martin July 18th, 2006

Woah, thanks! That sounds good. I wanted to take a look at a dictionary or something like that to see what words would match, but I haven’t managed to do so, yet. But “proceed” just sounds nice, I think I’ll go with that one. I’ll repost the new code reflecting the name change soon.

naisioxerloro November 28th, 2007

Hi.
Good design, who make it?

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