Java loop for a certain duration

Question

Is there a way I can do a for loop for a certain amount of time easily? (without measuring the time ourselves using System.currentTimeMillis() ?)

I.e. I want to do s

Answer 1

I made a simple, but sucky, implementation for this problem. I wanted to avoid Timer and TimeTask and ended up with this quickfix solution.

The main idea is that I simply wanted to create an independed countdown timer which I could just start and call isFinished() to check if the countdown is finished.

package RIPv3;

/**
 * Creates a countdown timer which runs its own thread and uses CountdownTimerThread,                which runs yet another
 * thread.
 *
 * start() method is called to start the countdown.
 * isFinished() method is called to check if the countdown is finished or not.
 * 
 * ! Be Aware!
 * This is a quickfix and sucky implementation.
 * There will be a small delay. This is not accurate.
 * 
 * @author Endre Vestbø
 * @version 1.0 (09.05.2011)
 */
public class CountdownTimer extends Thread {
/* Countdown timer */
private CountdownTimerThread timer;

/**
 * Creates a new timer and sets time to count down
 * @param time
 *          Time to count down
 */
public CountdownTimer(long time) {
    this.timer = new CountdownTimerThread(time);
}

public void run() {
    this.timer.start();
}

/**
 * @return
 *      False if timer is running, else true
 */
public boolean isFinished() {
    if(this.timer.getState() == Thread.State.TERMINATED)
        return true;

    return false;
}   
}

---

 package RIPv3;

/**
 * Used by CountdownTimer to count down time.
 * 
 * @author Endre Vestbø
 * @version 1.0  (09.05.2011)
 *
 */
public class CountdownTimerThread extends Thread {
private long time;

/** Create a new timer */
public CountdownTimerThread(long time) {
    this.time = time;
}

/**
 * Start a countdown
 * @param period
 *      Period to count down given in milliseconds
 */
public void run() {
    try {
        sleep(this.time);
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {

    }
}
}