Stopping and/or resuming a Thread???

Question

I have a thread which I need to run, then stop it and then later start it again and so on. Could someone explain (comprehensively) how I can do this safely.
Thread.stop() is not safe?
Thanks

Answer 1

Just don't use any of the deprecated methods in Thread.
Do something like this:
public class Task implements Runnable {
  private boolean running = true;
  private boolean alive = true;
  public void stopRunning() {
    running = false; // put to sleep
  public synchronized void resumeRunning() {
    running = true;
    notify(); // wake up
  public synchronized void kill() {
    running = false;
    alive = false;
    notify(); // or interrupt
  public void run() {
    while (alive) {
      while (running) {
      synchronized (this) {
        if (!running && alive) {
          try { wait(); }  // sleep
          catch (InterruptedException e) { /* ignore */ }
}