Interrupting a Thread in Java
In Java Threads, if any thread is in sleeping or waiting state (i.e. sleep() or wait() is invoked), calling the interrupt() method on the thread, breaks out the sleeping or waiting state throwing InterruptedException. If the thread is not in the sleeping or waiting state, calling the interrupt() method performs normal behavior and doesn’t interrupt the thread but sets the interrupt flag to true.
interrupt() method: If any thread is in sleeping or waiting for a state then using the interrupt() method, we can interrupt the execution of that thread by showing InterruptedException. A thread that is in the sleeping or waiting state can be interrupted with the help of the interrupt() method of Thread class.
Example: Suppose there are two threads and If one of the threads is blocked in an invocation of the wait(), wait(long), or wait(long, int) methods of the Object class, or of the join(), join(long), join(long, int), sleep(long), or sleep(long, int), methods of this class, then its interrupt status will be cleared and it will receive an InterruptedException, which gives the chance to another thread to execute the corresponding run() method of another thread which results into high performance and reduces the waiting time of the threads.
Different scenarios where we can interrupt a thread
Case 1: Interrupting a thread that doesn’t stop working: In the program, we handle the InterruptedException using try and catch block, so whenever any thread interrupts the currently executing thread it will come out from the sleeping state but it will not stop working.