[RESOLVED] [2005] Waiting for a thread to finish.

[Troy Lundin]

    Public Delegate Sub SetText(ByVal sText As String)
    Public Class Recurse
        Public sDirectory As String
        Public TextDelegate As SetText

        Public Sub Recurse()
            TextDelegate(sDirectory)
        End Sub
    End Class


                Dim r As New Recurse
                r.sDirectory = tbSearchFolder.Text

                If cbSearchSubDirectories.Checked Then
                    r.TextDelegate = AddressOf RecurseDirectories
                    Dim RecurseThread As New Threading.Thread(AddressOf r.Recurse)
                    RecurseThread.Name = "RecurseThread"
                    RecurseThread.IsBackground = True
                    RecurseThread.Start()
                End If

I do not want to run anymore code until the thread finishes. I still want the app to be active, but I want to wait until the thread finishes it's process before continuing. How would I do this?

By the way, I am making a File Searching program.

[jmcilhinney]

What you're asking for is not possible directly, but it is indirectly. When you call Start on the Thread it will start the thread and continue. You can call Thread.Join to wait at that point for the thread to finish but your main thread will freeze until that happens.

Basically what you need to do is have the call to Thread.Start as the last line in the current method. When the worker thread completes it can invoke a method and you can continue working.

I suggest that you use a BackgroundWorker because it is specifically designed to make this sort of thing easier. You call RunWorkerAsync, which rasies the DoWork event in a worker thread. You do your work in DoWork event handler. When the DoWork event handler completes the worker thread terminates. At that point the RunWorkerCompleted event is raised in the UI thread and you can continue your main processing from the RunWorkerCompleted event handler.

[Troy Lundin]

Thank you for your reply. I figured out it had to be the last line of the method right before I checked back here.