Problems cleaning up an applet

[Serethos]

i have an applet using one thread for drawing graphics.
the problem is when i use appletviewer with console window in background and i close the applet window, the onsole frame seems to lock for a while.


the code:

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public void start()       {             if (runner == null)             {                   runner = new Thread(this);                   runner.start();             }             System.out.println("Applet : Start");       }       public void stop()       {             System.out.println("applet stop");             runner = null;       }                   public void destroy()         {              offscreen.dispose();              System.out.println("destroyed");          }

im in sorrow that the thread doesnt get destroyed properly.

[tom]

Do you exit your run() function when runner is set to null? You must do something like this:

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public void run() {    // exit game loop when stop() is called.   while (runner != null) {    } }

When you exit the run() function the thread will stop.

[Serethos]

i added the code line, but finishing the applet still seems to take to long.  its only a matter of ~10 sec. but if i run a applet with no extra thread it clears up immediately

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[tom]

The only other thing I can think of is seting runner to be a daemon thread:

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runner = new Thread(this); runner.setDaemon(true); runner.start();

From setDaemon javadoc: "The Java Virtual Machine exits when the only threads running are all daemon threads."

[nonnus29]

I always call stop() on the animation thread and I've never seen the problem you describe.

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public void stop ()  {             if (animation != null)  {                   animation.stop();                   animation=null;             }             }

[swpalmer]

I always call stop() on the animation thread

tsk... tsk...

Using deprecated methods... sigh..

You should interrupt the animation thread and let it exit gracefully.
I usually have something like this for my animation loop:

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try {   while( !Thread.interrupted() ) {     doStuff()     Thread.sleep( x );   } } catch(InterruptedException e) {   // just exit }

In the applet stop() method:

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animThread.interrupt(); animThread.join();

[nonnus29]

Using deprecated methods... sigh..

Oops, I didn't know stop() was deprecated;  I wondered why I kept getting those deprecated warnings, but didn't care enough to compile with the correct flag to see what it was  :-/ .  Yes, I'm lazy like that....