I am trying to understand Interlocked in C# in thread synchronization.
public int MethodUsedByMultipleThreads()
{
var id = CreateNextId();
return id;
}
private long CreateNextId()
{
long id = 0;
Interlocked.Exchange(ref id , this._nextId);
Interlocked.Increment(ref this._nextId);
return id;
}
Is the line
Interlocked.Exchange(ref id , this._nextId);
redundant if I directly use
Interlocked.Increment(ref this._nextId);
return _nextId;
Will it serve the same purpose?
>Solution :
The line
Interlocked.Exchange(ref id, this._nextId);
is both redundant and incorrect. It is redundant because it is practically the same as:
id = this._nextId
…because the id is a local variable that is not shared with other threads. And it is incorrect because there is a race condition between incrementing the _nextId field and returning it from the method CreateNextId(). The correct implementation is:
private long CreateNextId()
{
long id;
id = Interlocked.Increment(ref this._nextId);
return id;
}
…or simply:
private long CreateNextId() => Interlocked.Increment(ref this._nextId);
The method Interlocked.Increment increments the _nextId field, and returns the incremented value as an atomic operation.