Race condition during thread start?

Question

I'm running the following code to start my threads, but they don't start as intended. For some reason, some of the threads start with the same objects (and some don't even start). If I try to debug, they start just fine (extra delay added by me clicking F10 to step through the code).

These are the functions in my forms app:

private void startWorkerThreads()
{
    int numThreads = config.getAllItems().Count;
    int i = 0;

    foreach (ConfigurationItem tmpItem in config.getAllItems())
    {
        i++;
        var t = new Thread(() => WorkerThread(tmpItem, i));
        t.Start();
        //return t;
    }
}

private void WorkerThread(ConfigurationItem cfgItem, int mul) 
{
    for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
    {
        Thread.Sleep(10*mul);
    }
    this.Invoke((ThreadStart)delegate()
    {
        this.textBox1.Text += "Thread " + cfgItem.name + " Complete!\r\n";
        this.textBox1.SelectionStart = textBox1.Text.Length;
        this.textBox1.ScrollToCaret();
    });
}

Anyone able to help me out?

Answer 1

The problem seems to be there : () => WorkerThread(tmpItem, i)

I'm not used to Func<> but it seems to work like anonymous delegates in .NET 2.0. Thus, you may have a reference to the arguments of the WorkerThread() method. Hence, their values are retrieved later (when the thread actually runs).

In this case, you may already be at the next iteration of your main thread...

Try this instead :

var t = new Thread(new ParametrizedThreadStart(WorkerThread));
t.Start(new { ConfigurationItem = tmpItem, Index = i } );

[EDIT] Other implementation. More flexible if you need to pass new parameters to the thread in the future.

private void startWorkerThreads()
{
    int numThreads = config.getAllItems().Count;
    int i = 0;

    foreach (ConfigurationItem tmpItem in config.getAllItems())
    {
            i++;
            var wt = new WorkerThread(tmpItem, i);
            wt.Start();
            //return t;
    }
}
private class WorkerThread
{
    private ConfigurationItem _cfgItem;
    private int _mul;
    private Thread _thread;
    public WorkerThread(ConfigurationItem cfgItem, int mul) {
        _cfgItem = cfgItem;
        _mul = mul;
    }
    public void Start()
    {
        _thread = new Thread(Run);
        _thread.Start();
    }
    private void Run()
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
        {
            Thread.Sleep(10 * _mul);
        }
        this.Invoke((ThreadStart)delegate()
        {
            this.textBox1.Text += "Thread " + _cfgItem.name + " Complete!\r\n";
            this.textBox1.SelectionStart = textBox1.Text.Length;
            this.textBox1.ScrollToCaret();
        });
    }
}