How To Start And Stop A Continuously Running Background Worker Using A Button

Question

Let\'s say I have a background worker like this:

private void backgroundWorker1_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
        {
             while(true)
          


        

Answer 1

I haven't tested this, I have code somewhere that I'll have to see exactly what I did, but something like this is an adaptation of Fredrik's answer:

private bool _performKilling;
private object _lockObject = new object();

private void backgroundWorker1_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
     while(true)
     {

         if (_performKilling)
         {
             //Kill zombies
         }
         else
         { //We pause until we are woken up so as not to consume cycles
             Monitor.Wait(_lockObject);
         }
     }
}

private void StartKilling()
{
    _performKilling = true;
    Monitor.Pulse(_lockObject);
}

private void StopAllThatKilling()
{
    _performKilling = false;
]

More complete example of this pattern here:

https://github.com/AaronLS/CellularAutomataAsNeuralNetwork/blob/fe9e6b950e5e28d2c99350cb8ff3157720555e14/CellLifeGame1/Modeling.cs