• Chris (13/13) Jan 28 2013 I am sure this has been asked before, but I couldn't find a
• qznc (11/24) Jan 28 2013 There is no Thread.kill/stop method, if you are looking for it.
• Dicebot (9/22) Jan 28 2013 Wild guess: sounds likely that your "play thread" does some
• Chris (5/5) Jan 28 2013 Thanks guys. I can get the functionality I need by simply using a
• Steven Schveighoffer (5/16) Jan 29 2013 Threads do not automatically receive messages. You have to check for th...

"Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:

I am sure this has been asked before, but I couldn't find a 
solution or a hint via Google: I use a separate thread to play a 
sound file. Everything works fine, except that I cannot tell the 
thread to stop what it is doing. It refuses to receive messages 
while it is doing what it's doing (even if I just run a simple 
test function with a long for-loop to make sure it's not a 
hardware issue). I should probably add that the thread is started 
from within the main loop of a socket that waits for input. If 
the input is "stop" it should tell the play-thread to stop, but 
nothing happens.
I can imagine that the thread is no longer visible to the 
main-thread, although I keep a reference to it. Any help or hint 
will be appreciated.

"qznc" <qznc go.to> writes:

On Monday, 28 January 2013 at 10:18:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
 I am sure this has been asked before, but I couldn't find a 
 solution or a hint via Google: I use a separate thread to play 
 a sound file. Everything works fine, except that I cannot tell 
 the thread to stop what it is doing. It refuses to receive 
 messages while it is doing what it's doing (even if I just run 
 a simple test function with a long for-loop to make sure it's 
 not a hardware issue). I should probably add that the thread is 
 started from within the main loop of a socket that waits for 
 input. If the input is "stop" it should tell the play-thread to 
 stop, but nothing happens.
 I can imagine that the thread is no longer visible to the 
 main-thread, although I keep a reference to it. Any help or 
 hint will be appreciated.

There is no Thread.kill/stop method, if you are looking for it.

Your thread should run a loop to check for termination repeatedly.

   while (this.running) {
     // do another chunk of work
   }

To terminate the thread, you need to toggle the running flag and 
wait for it to end.

   soundplayer.running = false;

If your "chunk of work" is blocked as it waits for IO or 
something, that might take a long time.

"Dicebot" <m.strashun gmail.com> writes:

On Monday, 28 January 2013 at 10:18:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
 I am sure this has been asked before, but I couldn't find a 
 solution or a hint via Google: I use a separate thread to play 
 a sound file. Everything works fine, except that I cannot tell 
 the thread to stop what it is doing. It refuses to receive 
 messages while it is doing what it's doing (even if I just run 
 a simple test function with a long for-loop to make sure it's 
 not a hardware issue). I should probably add that the thread is 
 started from within the main loop of a socket that waits for 
 input. If the input is "stop" it should tell the play-thread to 
 stop, but nothing happens.
 I can imagine that the thread is no longer visible to the 
 main-thread, although I keep a reference to it. Any help or 
 hint will be appreciated.

Wild guess: sounds likely that your "play thread" does some 
blocking processing and just never pauses to process messages. 
You need to explicitly say to the thread when to have a pause in 
a job and check incoming messages. You can kill the thread 
externally but that would be an abnormal termination, no 
destructors called and all the bad stuff.

That said, I assume some typical pthread-based code, details may 
differ depending on the implementation.

"Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:

Thanks guys. I can get the functionality I need by simply using a 
shared flag that breaks out of the play loop if set to false. I 
thought it might be possible to implement the stop function by 
sending a message to the thread assuming that the thread 
"listens" to receive *while* executing its task.

"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:

On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 05:18:26 -0500, Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> wrote:

 I am sure this has been asked before, but I couldn't find a solution or  
 a hint via Google: I use a separate thread to play a sound file.  
 Everything works fine, except that I cannot tell the thread to stop what  
 it is doing. It refuses to receive messages while it is doing what it's  
 doing (even if I just run a simple test function with a long for-loop to  
 make sure it's not a hardware issue). I should probably add that the  
 thread is started from within the main loop of a socket that waits for  
 input. If the input is "stop" it should tell the play-thread to stop,  
 but nothing happens.
 I can imagine that the thread is no longer visible to the main-thread,  
 although I keep a reference to it. Any help or hint will be appreciated.

Threads do not automatically receive messages.  You have to check for them  
periodically.

Messages go into a mailbox until you query for them.

-Steve