Are Thread.stop and friends ever safe in Java?

Question

The stop(), suspend(), and resume() in java.lang.Thread are deprecated because they are unsafe. The Oracle recommended w

Answer 1

A concrete example would probably help here. If anyone can suggest a good alternative to the following use of stop I'd be very interested. Re-writing java.util.regex to support interruption doesn't count.

import java.util.regex.*;
import java.util.*;

public class RegexInterruptTest {

    private static class BadRegexException extends RuntimeException { }
        final Thread mainThread = Thread.currentThread();
        TimerTask interruptTask = new TimerTask() {
            public void run() {
                System.out.println("Stopping thread.");
                // Doesn't work:
                // mainThread.interrupt();
                // Does work but is deprecated and nasty
                mainThread.stop(new BadRegexException());
            }
        };

        Timer interruptTimer = new Timer(true);
        interruptTimer.schedule(interruptTask, 2000L);

        String s = "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaab";
        String exp = "(a+a+){1,100}";
        Pattern p = Pattern.compile(exp);
        Matcher m = p.matcher(s);
        try {
            System.out.println("Match: " + m.matches());
            interruptTimer.cancel();
        } catch(BadRegexException bre) {
            System.out.println("Oooops");
        } finally {
            System.out.println("All over");
        }
    }
}