Blocking queue and multi-threaded consumer, how to know when to stop

Question

I have a single thread producer which creates some task objects which are then added into an ArrayBlockingQueue (which is of fixed size).

I also start a

Answer 1

In your code-block where you attempt to retrive element from the queue , use poll(time,unit) instead of the take().

try { 
    Object queueElement = inputQueue.poll(timeout,unit);
     //process queueElement        
 } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        if(!isRunning && queue.isEmpty())
         return ; 
 } 

By specifying appropriate values of timeout , you ensure that threads wont keep blocking in case there is a unfortunate sequence of

1. isRunning is true
2. Queue becomes empty , so threads enter blocked wait ( if using take()
3. isRunning is set to false