Java 9 Concurrency Cookbook - Second Edition

Canceling a task in an executor

When you work with an executor, you don't have to manage threads. You only implement Runnable or Callable tasks and send them to the executor. It's the executor that's responsible for creating threads, managing them in a thread pool, and finishing them if they are not needed. Sometimes, you may want to cancel a task that you send to the executor. In that case, you can use the cancel() method of Future, which allows you to make the cancelation operation. In this recipe, you will learn how to use this method to cancel tasks that you have sent to an executor.