How can I wait for a thread to finish with .NET?

Question

I\'ve never really used threading before in C# where I need to have two threads, as well as the main UI thread. Basically, I have the following.

public void S         


        

Answer 1

Add

t1.Join();    // Wait until thread t1 finishes

after you start it, but that won't accomplish much as it's essentialy the same result as running on the main thread!

I can highly recommended reading Joe Albahari's Threading in C# free e-book, if you want to gain an understanding of threading in .NET.

Answer 2

Try this:

List<Thread> myThreads = new List<Thread>();

foreach (Thread curThread in myThreads)
{
    curThread.Start();
}

foreach (Thread curThread in myThreads)
{
    curThread.Join();
}

Answer 3

I would have your main thread pass a callback method to your first thread, and when it's done, it will invoke the callback method on the mainthread, which can launch the second thread. This keeps your main thread from hanging while its waiting for a Join or Waithandle. Passing methods as delegates is a useful thing to learn with C# anyway.

Answer 4

Here's a simple example that waits for a tread to finish, within the same class. It also makes a call to another class in the same namespace. I included the "using" statements so it can execute as a Windows Forms form as long as you create button1.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Threading;

namespace ClassCrossCall
{

    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        int number = 0; // This is an intentional problem, included
                        // for demonstration purposes
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            button1.Text = "Initialized";
        }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            button1.Text = "Clicked";
            button1.Refresh();
            Thread.Sleep(400);
            List<Task> taskList = new List<Task>();
            taskList.Add(Task.Factory.StartNew(() => update_thread(2000)));
            taskList.Add(Task.Factory.StartNew(() => update_thread(4000)));
            Task.WaitAll(taskList.ToArray());
            worker.update_button(this, number);
        }

        public void update_thread(int ms)
        {
            // It's important to check the scope of all variables
            number = ms; // This could be either 2000 or 4000. Race condition.
            Thread.Sleep(ms);
        }
    }

    class worker
    {
        public static void update_button(Form1 form, int number)
        {
            form.button1.Text = $"{number}";
        }
    }
}

Answer 5

You want the Thread.Join() method, or one of its overloads.

Answer 6

The previous two answers are great and will work for simple scenarios. There are other ways to synchronize threads, however. The following will also work:

public void StartTheActions()
{
    ManualResetEvent syncEvent = new ManualResetEvent(false);

    Thread t1 = new Thread(
        () =>
        {
            // Do some work...
            syncEvent.Set();
        }
    );
    t1.Start();

    Thread t2 = new Thread(
        () =>
        {
            syncEvent.WaitOne();

            // Do some work...
        }
    );
    t2.Start();
}

ManualResetEvent is one of the various WaitHandle's that the .NET framework has to offer. They can provide much richer thread synchronization capabilities than the simple, but very common tools like lock()/Monitor, Thread.Join, etc.

They can also be used to synchronize more than two threads, allowing complex scenarios such as a 'master' thread that coordinates multiple 'child' threads, multiple concurrent processes that are dependent upon several stages of each other to be synchronized, etc.