Condition variables in C# [closed]

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Are condition variables & monitors used in C#?

Can someone give me an example?

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The equivalent of a condition variable that you use just for signaling in .NET is the abstract WaitHandle class. Practical implementations of it are the ManualResetEvent and AutoResetEvent classes.

A condition variable that you use as a monitor requires System.Threading.Monitor. The C# lock statement makes it very easy to use, it ensures the monitor is always exited without explicitly programming the Exit() call.

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System.Threading.Monitor is one way (example within)

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You can use the Lock object which acts as syntactic sugar for the Monitor class.

lock(someObject)
{
    // Thread safe code here.
}

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/c5kehkcz%28VS.80%29.aspx

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As an alternative to ManualResetEvent and friends, Windows now provides native support for condition variables. I haven't benchmarked it myself, but there's a good chance your performance will improve when leveraging the native API.

Here's a Code Project article that explains how to access this (relatively new) construct from C#:

A .NET Wrapper for the Vista/Server 2008 Condition Variable

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This version atomically unlocks a Mutex or ReaderWriterLockSlim while waiting for signalling, and relocks it before returning - which is the posix way.

using System.Collections.Concurrent;

namespace System.Threading.More {
    public class ConditionVariable {
        private readonly ConcurrentQueue<ManualResetEventSlim> _waitingThreads = new ConcurrentQueue<ManualResetEventSlim>();

        /// <summary>
        ///     Atomically unlocks and waits for a signal.
        ///     Then relocks the mutex before returning
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="mutex"></param>
        public void Wait(Mutex mutex) {
            if (mutex == null) {
                throw new ArgumentNullException("mutex");
            }
            var waitHandle = new ManualResetEventSlim();
            try {
                _waitingThreads.Enqueue(waitHandle);
                mutex.ReleaseMutex();
                waitHandle.Wait();
            } finally {
                waitHandle.Dispose();
            }
            mutex.WaitOne();
        }

        public void WaitRead(ReaderWriterLockSlim readerWriterLock) {
            if (readerWriterLock == null) {
                throw new ArgumentNullException("readerWriterLock");
            }
            var waitHandle = new ManualResetEventSlim();
            try {
                _waitingThreads.Enqueue(waitHandle);
                readerWriterLock.ExitReadLock();
                waitHandle.Wait();
            } finally {
                waitHandle.Dispose();
            }
            readerWriterLock.EnterReadLock();
        }

        public void Signal() {
            ManualResetEventSlim waitHandle;
            if (_waitingThreads.TryDequeue(out waitHandle)) {
                waitHandle.Set();
            }
        }

        public void Broadcast() {
            ManualResetEventSlim waitHandle;
            while (_waitingThreads.TryDequeue(out waitHandle)) {
                waitHandle.Set();
            }
        }
    }
}