Options for informing a Thread to stop

Question

I need to inform a so-called worker thread to stop work at the next available oppertunity. Currently I'm using something like this:

    public void Run()
    {
        while (!StopRequested)
            DoWork();
    }

The concern I have is that StopRequested is being set to True on a different thread. Is this safe? I know I can't lock a boolean. Perhaps there's a different way to inform a thread that a stop is required. For example I would be happy to check Thread.CurrentThread.ThreadState == ThreadState.StopRequested but it's not clear how I can set the thread state as such.

Answer 1

This is a better approach than trying to set the ThreadState. If you look at the docs for ThreadState, it specifically says that StopRequested is for internal use only.

Setting a boolean from another thread is a safe operation. You shouldn't need to lock in this case.