Breaking for-loops with listeners?

[CBarry]

I have an action listener on a button that starts a for-loop. I would like to add a key listener that causes that for-loop to stop, but instead it waits for the for-loop to finish before it executes the command. How can I get this for loop to stop before it is finished iterating?

For example:

start, stop are Components.

start.addMouseListener(new MouseListener(){
method mouseClicked(){
execute some for-loop
}
......

stop.addKeyListener(new KeyListener(){
method keyPressed(){
stop for-loop from the 'start' component
}

.......

[markw8500]

You want to have a boolean that becomes true when your event takes place... Then in your for loop you want to put:

     if(myBoolean){

          break;
      }

[toadaly]

The problem is, event processing is single threaded in swing and awt. You are starting your loop from an actionlistener, which means no event processing can take place until that call returns.

To do what you are wanting to do, you need to launch your for loop in a different thread.

[CBarry]

Thanks, I took your advice and I have it working now.