Implementing Cancel Operation

[Bhagya Tangutur]

what is the ncie way to implement Cancel Operation.
say i issued a command based on user operation,but suddenly user wants to stop the operation.I don't like to execute single statement
after user sends operation cancel request.besides i don't like to check some condition before executing each statmet.
thanks

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

You don't need to check a condition before EVERY statement, but the best way to implement a "cancel" functionality is to have your long-running operation check some condition periodically. Response within a half-second or so is perceived by the user as instantaneous -- and millions of statements can execute in that amount of time! Of course, most long-running operations are loops, and you'll typically check the condition each time around the loop.
Often one thread is running some operation, while another is waiting for it to complete using join() or wait(). In this case, you can interrupt the waiting thread, and it will return immediately; then you can set the condition so the task thread will stop eventually. This kind of "two-phase" cancel works nicely.
The alternative to polling a condition is to use Thread.stop() -- and really, you don't want to do that.