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Encapsulates a class performing a certain activity periodically, which can be initiated once
and then permanently shut down, but not paused/resumed. The class owns its own separate
thread, and manages this thread all by itself. The periodic task is executed on this thread.
The chief differences to Timer are as follows. This
class will never issue overlapping activities, even if an activity takes much longer than the interval;
the interval is between the end of the previous occurrence of the activity and the start of the next.
The activity is executed on a foreground thread (by default), and thus will complete once started,
unless a catastrophic abort occurs. When shutting down the activity, it's possible to wait until the
last occurrence, if any, has completed fully. Threading: unsafe (call public methods on the creating thread only) - or is it? |