How to terminate a worker thread correctly in c#

Question

Problem statement

I have a worker thread that basically scans a folder, going into the files within it, and then sleeps for a while. The scanning operat

Answer 1

I recommend to keep it simple:

while (m_shouldRun)
{
    DoSomethingThatTakesSeveralSeconds();
    for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)  // example: 5 seconds sleep
    {
        if (!m_shouldRun)
            break;
        Thread.Sleep(1000);
    }
}

public void Stop()
{
    m_shouldRun = false;
    // maybe thread.Join();
}

This has the following advantages:

• It smells like busy waiting, but it's not. $NUMBER_OF_SECONDS checks are done during the waiting phase, which is not comparable to the thousands of checks done in real busy waiting.
• It's simple, which greatly reduces the risk of error in multi-threaded code. All your Stop method needs to do is to set m_shouldRun to false and (maybe) call Thread.Join (if it is necessary for the thread to finish before Stop is left). No synchronization primitives are needed (except for marking m_shouldRun as volatile).