Stop infinite function in kotlin using coroutines - difference between async and GlobalScope.async

mtw 0
Viewed 47

I need to wrap some Java-callback function using timeout. Callback may be never called, so it should be interrupted with exception. Here was my first try:

fun main() = runBlocking {
    withTimeout(500) {
        async {
            notCalledCallback()
        }.await()
    }
    Unit
}

private suspend fun notCalledCallback() = suspendCoroutine<Boolean> { cont ->
    startScanning(object : SomeCallback {
        override fun done() {
            cont.resume(true)
        }
    })
}

fun startScanning(callBack: SomeCallback) {
    // callback may never be invoked
    //    callBack.done()
}

interface SomeCallback {
    fun done()
}

I expected to have a TimeoutCancellationException after 500ms, but actually it never happens. However if I replace

async {
 notCalledCallback()
}.await()

with

GlobalScope.async {
 notCalledCallback()
}.await()

it starts to work. Why? What is the difference between async and GlobalScope.async in this case and why it works in latter case?

kotlin-coroutines kotlin
2 Answers
    while (true) {
        Thread.sleep(1)
    }

This block of code does not comply with coroutine practices and doesn't offer the coroutine framework any opportunity to cancel it.

A correct implementation of infinityFunction() would be to simply call awaitCancellation. Alternately, you could replace Thread.sleep with delay.

Notably, using GlobalScope actually breaks the correct relationship between your coroutines (making the async block not a child of the calling coroutine), with the result that your main function doesn't wait for infinityFunction() to properly finish cancelling. While this appears to make your code work, it actually just conceals a worse bug.

Louis Wasserman0

The answer is actually very simple: suspendCoroutine() is not cancellable. You need to instead use a very similar function: suspendCancellableCoroutine().

Please be aware that ideally you should not only swap one function with another, but also properly cancel the asynchronous operation before resuming the coroutine. Otherwise you leak this background operation as it is entirely detached from your execution context. You can detect cancellations with cont.invokeOnCancellation(), as described in the documentation linked above.

If you use GlobalScope then you await() for the operation in your current execution context, but the operation itself runs in another context. In this case if you cancel, then you cancel waiting, but you don't cancel the operation and you don't care whether it completes or not.

broot0
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