Chapter 9. Multithreaded Programming

IN BRIEF

This chapter illustrates the benefits of multithreaded programming, as well as the technical details involved in using threads in your applications. The first section talks about the basics of multithreaded programming. You will learn how to create, pause, join, stop, and terminate threads. Next, the chapter illustrates thread synchronization in depth. You will learn why you need to synchronize threads and the various methods of doing so. Finally, you will see examples of the use of the thread pool class. You will learn how to create worker threads and post work items to a thread pool.

WHAT YOU NEED

RECOMMENDED SOFTWARE	.NET Framework C#.NET environment
RECOMMENDED HARDWARE	.NET-enabled desktop client
SKILLS REQUIRED	C# coding

MULTITHREADED PROGRAMMING AT A GLANCE

Thread Basics		185
	Understanding the Key Thread Properties and Methods	185	Terminating a Thread	188
			Suspending a Thread	191
	Explaining the ThreadStart Delegate	187	Creating a Pause by "Sleeping" a Thread	191
	Creating a Thread	188	Joining a Thread	191
	Running a Thread	188
Synchronization		192
	Understanding the Different Types of Synchronization	193
Applying the lock Keyword		193
	Raising Thread Events	194	Safeguarding Variables (Interlocked Increment/Decrement)	203
	Using the Mutex Class	196
	Using the Monitor Class	198	Reading Without Waiting (ReaderWriterLock)	203
Using the Thread Pool for Asynchronous Programming		206
	Explaining the WaitCallback Delegate	206	Queuing a Work Item	207
			Passing Data to Threads	208
Further Reading		209