Timer: Avoiding Threads

• If you simply want to schedule a particular action, you should use timers.
• The following example first prints "Task scheduled." and five seconds later prints "Time's up!".

import java.util.Timer;
import java.util.TimerTask;

/**
 * Simple demo that uses java.util.Timer to schedule a task to execute
 * once 5 seconds have passed.
 */

public class Reminder {
  Timer timer;
  
  public Reminder(int seconds) {
    timer = new Timer();
    timer.schedule(new RemindTask(), seconds*1000);
  }

  class RemindTask extends TimerTask {
    public void run() {
      System.out.println("Time's up!");
      timer.cancel(); //Terminate the timer thread
    }
  }

  public static void main(String args[]) {
    System.out.println("About to schedule task.");
    new Reminder(5);
    System.out.println("Task scheduled.");
  }
}

//To schedule it to go off every second do:
timer.schedule(new RemindTask(), seconds*1000, 1*1000);