Threads and Concurrent Programming

Thread Control

The various methods in the Thread class (Fig. 14.4) can be used to exert some control over a thread’s execution. The start() and stop() methods play the obvious roles of starting and stopping a thread. These methods will sometimes be called automatically. For example, an applet is treated as a thread by the browser, or applet viewer, which is responsible for starting and stopping it.

As we saw in the NumberThread example, the run() method encapsulates the thread’s basic algorithm. It is usually not called directly. Instead, it is called by the thread’s start() method, which handles any system-dependent initialization tasks before calling run().