Stopping a thread via command line

[mrybicki]

I am a programmer with enough java knowledge to ge t my face slapped. Although this is a thread problem, I'm not sure if I should post here or in the general group.
I want to desgin a thread that the user can start/stop at a command prompt on a Sun box. The basic logic would be the user runs ./startup.sh it starts and ./shutdown.sh it stops. The basic logic I'm using is this:
public static void main(String args[])
{
if(args.length==1)
{
if(args[0].trim().toUpperCase().equals("SHUTDOWN"))
{
isDone = true;
...
}
}
else
{
isDone = false;
...
}
}
Using the java documentation as a guide, I trying to use a flag variable to stop the thread. I want the flag variable to be "static"; when I call shutdown, the thread is still there.
Any tips/ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Paul Keohan]

I'm a little unsure of you question but would using a while loop help?

 boolean run = true;
 while (run)
{
//do stuff.....
if (something) run = false;
}

The Thread will then stop running if the 'something' conditon is true.

[Laudney Ren]

You can call the thread's interrupt() method when you want it to stop. In the implementation code of the thread, catch InterruptedException and exit there.