Why does this break statement break not work?

Question

I have the following code:

public void post(String message) {
    final String mess = message;
    (new Thread() {
        public void run() {
            while (true) {
                try {
                    if (status.equals("serviceResolved")) {
                        output.println(mess);
                        Game.log.fine("The following message was successfully sent: " + mess);
                        break;
                    } else {
                        try {Thread.sleep(1000);} catch (InterruptedException ie) {}
                    }
                } catch (NullPointerException e) {
                    try {Thread.sleep(1000);} catch (InterruptedException ie) {}
                }
            }
        }
    }).start();
}

In my log file I find a lot of lines like this:

The following message was successfully sent: blablabla
The following message was successfully sent: blablabla
The following message was successfully sent: blablabla
The following message was successfully sent: blablabla

And my program is not responding.

It seems to me that the break command does not work. What can be a possible reason for that.

The interesting thing is that it happens not all the time. Sometimes my program works fine, sometimes the above described problem happens.

Answer 1

Could it be that this line succeeds:

output.println(mess);

but this line is throwing a null pointer exception:

Game.log.fine(...

In this case you'll see the output on the console, but the break statement is never reached. Is Game.log perhaps null?

Answer 2

What exactly does Game.log.fine do? Could it be that it throws a NullPtrException after output, or could it be that you call the post-method several times?

Remove the catch of the NullPointerException, this is bad style (occurrence of a NullPointerException is always a programming error) and add some more log-messages in the method (or use a debugger).

Answer 3

You are starting a new thread every time you call the post method. I thing the method is OK but caller program isn't.