Updating Swing Display Regulary in Background

I think this would be setup with Thread, but I'm posting it with the idea
that there might be a better way, or something I'm unaware of that might
work better.

I have a Swing app that creates a number of files in a directory and later
prints them out.  In the app window, I want to be able to keep an updated
count of how many files are in the directory, waiting to be printed.  The
best way I know of to do this is to use Thread and create a small thread
that is essentially a While loop.  Inside the loop, I count the files in
the directory, then sleep for a few seconds, then repeat.  I'd start this
thread once the GUI is complete and visible.

Is this pretty much the "best" way (recognizing that "best" is a relative
term) to do this, or are there other ways that are recommended?

Thanks!

Hal

Hal Vaughan wrote:
> I think this would be setup with Thread, but I'm posting it with the idea
> that there might be a better way, or something I'm unaware of that might
> work better.
>
> I have a Swing app that creates a number of files in a directory and later
> prints them out.  In the app window, I want to be able to keep an updated
> count of how many files are in the directory, waiting to be printed.  The
> best way I know of to do this is to use Thread and create a small thread
> that is essentially a While loop.  Inside the loop, I count the files in
> the directory, then sleep for a few seconds, then repeat.  I'd start this
> thread once the GUI is complete and visible.
>
> Is this pretty much the "best" way (recognizing that "best" is a relative
> term) to do this, or are there other ways that are recommended?

It's probably better to have your "working" thread
update the GUI each time it finishes a file, using
SwingUtilities.invokeLater().

--
Eric.Sosman@sun.com