Terminating a Thread

A thread terminates if it reaches the end of its code block. The best way to terminate a thread early is to convince it to reach the end of its code block. This way, the thread can run cleanup code before dying.

This thread runs a loop while the instance variable continue is true. Set this variable to false, and the thread will die a natural death:

require 'thread'

class CounterThread < Thread
  def initialize
    @count = 0
    @continue = true

    super do
      @count += 1 while @continue
      puts "I counted up to #{@count} before I was cruelly stopped."
    end
  end

  def stop
    @continue = false
  end
end

counter = CounterThread.new
sleep 2
counter.stop