Deliberately aborting a Task

Question

Assuming I have a very long running operation that does not contain any loop, I mean the nature of the operation is long running without any recursion and repetition. In this case if I use the CancellationToken type to throw a cancelling exception or a Boolean Flag for "Safely" cancelling the task, the token or flag can never be reached.

Now the only goal would be to break the running task regardless of whether aborting is a good or bad approach. When using threads, the abort method is present (I'm not interested in discussing about it's disadvantages as I'm already aware of it), but when it comes to the Task type, I don't see it there. And assuming my Task has to return a value, then threads are out of questions.

What is the safest and most efficient way to implement this.

There is no abort method because tasks are not necessarily tied to threads. — dcastro, Sep 15 '15 at 10:44
@dcastro: I already know that, I'm looking for the solution. I wanna break it no matter what, very much like Environment.Exit(0) that breaks all running operations and close the application. — Arnold Zahrneinder, Sep 15 '15 at 10:45
A bit harsh solution: Creating the `Task` in an other `AppDomain` and dispose that `AppDomain` if you have to kill the task? ^^; — Tamir Vered, Sep 15 '15 at 10:52
You want to abort task from from inside executing of task or from outside? — Yuriy Zaletskyy, Sep 15 '15 at 10:53
@Some1Pr0: That is a very very unsafe approach. It can raise errors — Arnold Zahrneinder, Sep 15 '15 at 10:54
Capture the thread (Thread.CurrentThread) inside the task when it starts and put it in a variable accessible outside the task. Just note that Tasks normally run on the treadpool. Don't know what happens when you abort thread pool threads. — adrianm, Sep 15 '15 at 10:55
@Arrrr This should prove interesting for you http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4359910/is-it-possible-to-abort-a-task-like-aborting-a-thread-thread-abort-method — Paul Zahra, Sep 15 '15 at 10:58
@Arrrr: I am aware of that and was partially kidding but I don't think there is an elegant way to do it if the Task is constantly working and the Cancelation is never reached, I would really like to see a good answer for this one... — Tamir Vered, Sep 15 '15 at 10:59
@Arrrr we all know you are tasking about tasks not threads... there is no way to abort a task, they run in a thread.. you need to kill the process or abort the main thread somehow — Mathematics, Sep 15 '15 at 11:01
@PleaseTeach: What is the point of running the Task in the thread? In that case I would implement a new Threaded-Type. I said I'm not interested in thread. We all know that thread can be aborted easily. — Arnold Zahrneinder, Sep 15 '15 at 11:02
@Arrrr Try reading the linked SO post and read the post directly under the accepted answer. — Paul Zahra, Sep 15 '15 at 11:12
Basically you need to build support for cancellation in your BeginStart, you haven't so you can only do it by aborting the thread or appdomain... Duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9390599/c-sharp-cancel-a-long-running-task-that-not-a-loop — Paul Zahra, Sep 15 '15 at 12:40
@Arrrr 3rd party? Then your stuck with thread / app domain abortion... euch. — Paul Zahra, Sep 15 '15 at 12:45
You can edit your question to clarify how the duplicate doesn't apply to your question, but please do so constructively. — Martijn Pieters, Sep 15 '15 at 14:13

Mathematics · Answer 1 · 2015-09-15T10:55:52.240

-1

You can kill the process,

process.Kill();

Cancellation task or aborting task is never promised regardless of what documentation says.

OR

You can start your tasks in a thread and then use thread.abort();.

I am afraid you don't have much choice available here.To be more sure, you need to provide context.

edited Sep 15 '15 at 10:55

answered Sep 15 '15 at 10:44

Mathematics

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I already mentioned it is of no use – Arnold Zahrneinder Sep 15 '15 at 10:45
You didn't read text of question carefully – Yuriy Zaletskyy Sep 15 '15 at 10:48
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updated it now.. User edited his question after i answered like in a seconds – Mathematics Sep 15 '15 at 10:52
Please refer to this line of my question. `And assuming my Task has to return a value, then threads are out of questions. ` – Arnold Zahrneinder Sep 15 '15 at 11:00
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@Arrrr provide the complete context, I would be able to provide you a better answer then – Mathematics Sep 15 '15 at 11:03

Deliberately aborting a Task

1 Answers1