To determine the instantaneous execution state of a runnable, use the getExecutionState() function in the RWRunnableHandle class. This function returns one of the values defined by the RWExecutionState enumerated type, which are listed in Runnable State.

You should not use the getExecutionState() function to poll for runnable state changes. A polling loop using this function is unreliable because the runnable could conceivably make several state transitions between any two calls to this function. Also, the execution state retrieved might not reflect the current state of the runnable because the runnable might have shifted to another state by the time you can act on the value returned.