Clean dispose a thread

Question

Hi,
I am trying to cleanly dispose from a thread after it's completed it's execution. However I see the activeCount in ThreadGroup increase with each new request. i,e the old threads are not being disposed after it's completetion.
I am using JDK1.3 on HPUX PA RISC server.
This is the code I have written to cleanly exit from thread
public void run()
      while( exitFlag == false )
       this.startFirmwareUpload();
          synchronized(waitOnIPDBSession)
            try {
                    waitOnIPDBSession.wait();
            catch( Exception e ) { }
      if ( exitFlag == true ) {
           // Clean up the thread when done
                 // Exit from run method
                 System.out.println("Cleanly exiting from thread...");
           return;
     * Cleanly close a working thread
    public synchronized void processExitThread()
        // Set exitFlag variable to true
        this.exitFlag = true;
        // Remove unique entry from Map
        ftpHandlerList.remove(waitOnIPDBSession);
    }After each new thread completes it's execution, I am calling "processExitThread" method. However the "exitFlag" in "run" method is not being set to false, so the "run" method never exits from the infinite loop.
Any suggestions to cleanly exit/dispose from a thread are welcome.
Thanks
S

Answer 1

Hi,
  Thread.interrupt()  did the trick. Now the thread is being destroyed after it's completion.My current implementation is this
private boolean exitFlag;
public void run()
    while( this.exitFlag == false )
       this.startFirmwareUpload();
          synchronized(waitOnIPDBSession)
             try {
                     waitOnIPDBSession.wait();
               catch (InterruptedException e)  {
                this.exitFlag = true;
     if (this.exitFlag == true) {
           // Clean up the thread when done
           return;
     * Cleanly close a working thread
    public synchronized void processExitThread()
      ftpHandlerList.remove(waitOnIPDBSession);
      Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
    }Do you think this would be a better implementation, in terms of safety of the application:
public void run()
   while ( true )
         boolean b = Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted();
         if ( !b )
               // Thread not interrupted
               this.startFirmwareUpload();
               synchronized(waitOnIPDBSession)
                   try {
                     waitOnIPDBSession.wait();
                 catch (InterruptedException e)  {
                   this.exitFlag = true;
         else {
               // Thread is interrupted
               this.exitFlag = true;
       if ( this.exitFlag == true ) {
           break;   // Exit from while loop
     } // End of While loop
   return;
}Any feedback welcome.
Thanks
S