Stop all instances of same coroutine?

Question

So I call the same coroutine multiple times, which creates multiple instances of the coroutine. This works perfectly, the issue arrises when I want to stop ALL of the instances of that coroutine. I have other coroutines running simultaneously so the StopAllCoroutines wont be of use to me(Unless there's a way to specify it to a specific coroutine "type"). I also don't know how many instances of said coroutine there are as they are generated by the program itself. For Instance:

 void Start(){
     StartCoroutine("SomethingImportant");
 }
 void Update(){
     //If you press the W key, an instance of "TheCoroutine" will be initiated
     if(Input.GetButtonDown(KeyCode.W)){
         StartCoroutine("TheCoroutine");
     }
     //If you press the S key, all the previous instances of "TheCoroutine" will be destroyed
     if(Input.GetButtonDown(KeyCode.S)){
         //This is the part where I want to end all instances of "TheCoroutine"
         //without ending "SomethingImportant"
     }
 }
 IEnumerator TheCoroutine(){
     //Do something
     //This may be called multiple times which creates multiple instances
     //of this coroutine
 }
 IEnumerator SomethingImportant(){
     //Something important that I don't want to stop
 }

Answer 1

StartCoroutine returns an object of type Coroutine. You can keep them in a list and then close all of them with StopCoroutine.

I would have to test what happens when you use string arguments to start and stop a coroutine. Because with IEnumerator and Coroutine argument types you have a reference to a specific coroutine, but with string you do not, so I wonder what happens.

Edit: Ok, if you are using string arguments for starting, you can also use a string for stopping and it will stop all coroutines with this name. Here is a simple code that I created to test that:

 public class Coroutines : MonoBehaviour 
 {
     private readonly WaitForSeconds _wait = new WaitForSeconds(0.1f);
     private int _i;
 
     private void Start()
     {
         for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
         {
             _i = i;
             StartCoroutine("Coroutine");
         }
     }
 
     public void StopCoroutines()
     {
         StopCoroutine("Coroutine");
     }
 
     private IEnumerator Coroutine()
     {
         int i = _i;
         while (true)
         {
             Debug.Log(i.ToString());
             yield return _wait;
         }
     }
 }
 
 [CustomEditor(typeof(Coroutines))]
 public class CoroutinesInspector : Editor
 {
     public override void OnInspectorGUI()
     {
         base.OnInspectorGUI();
 
         if (GUILayout.Button("Stop coroutines"))
         {
             ((Coroutines)target).StopCoroutines();
         }
     }
 }

Stop all instances of same coroutine?

1 Reply

Your answer

Follow this Question

Related Questions