Java: Difference in usage between Thread.interrupted() and Thread.isInterrupted()?

Question

Java question: As far as I know, there are two ways to check inside a thread whether the thread received an interrupt signal, Thread.interrupted() and Thr

Answer 1

Here are a couple of examples of how you might use these methods:

1. If you were writing your own thread pool, you might want to check the interrupted status on one of the threads that you are managing. In that case, you would call managedThread.isInterrupted() to check it's interrupted status.

2. If you are writing your own InterruptedException handlers that don't immediately retrigger an equivalent exception via Thread.currentThread().interrupt() (for example, you might have a finally block after your exception handlers), you might want to check whether that thread that you are currently running on has been interrupted via an outside call or InterruptedException. In that case, you would check the boolean value of Thread.interrupted() to check on the status of your current thread.

The second method is really only ever useful to me in situations where I'm afraid that someone has written an exception eater at a lower level that, by extension, has eaten an InterruptedException as well.