When calling DoStuffToDictionary(dictionaryTwo), is it safe to assume the operations within the method body including indexers, and LINQ extension methods will also be thread safe?
To phrase this question differently, could a cross thread exception or deadlock arise?
var dictionaryOne = new ConcurrentDictionary<int,int>();
var dictionaryTwo = new Dictionary<int,int>();
DoStuffToDictionary(dictionaryOne);
DoStuffToDictionary(dictionaryTwo);
void DoStuffToDictionary(IDictionary<int,int> items) {
// Manipulate dictionary
if (items[0] == -1) {
items[0] = 0; // Dumb example, but are indexers like this OK?
}
}
Concurrent. ConcurrentDictionary<TKey,TValue>. This collection class is a thread-safe implementation.
It is thread safe in your usage. It becomes not thread safe when the delegate passed to AddOrUpdate has side effects, because those side effects may be executed twice for the same key and existing value.
Represents a thread-safe collection of key/value pairs that can be accessed by multiple threads concurrently.
The GetOrAdd function The ConcurrentDictionary is a dictionary that allows you to add, fetch and remove items in a thread-safe way. If you're going to be accessing a dictionary from multiple threads, then it should be your go-to class.
There are several problems with this code:
IDictionary
interface can be implemented by any type of a dictionary
Your example is certainly not thread safe, since you are working on an IDictionary<int,int>
interface, which doesn't guarantee any thread safety. Even your code passes both a Dictionary
and a ConcurrentDictionary
to the method.
Transactions need to be atomic to make them thread-safe
Even if the dictionary implementation was guaranteed to be thread safe, your code wouldn't be because you are not locking the access to your dictionary between two calls:
if (items[0] == -1) {
// <-- another thread can access items in this moment
items[0] = 0;
}
Returning a LINQ query is never thread-safe
If you are using LINQ to return IEnumerable
or IQueriable
from your method, then locks have little effect, unless you use the ToList()
method to evaluate the expression immediatelly and cache results. This is due to the fact that a LINQ only "prepares" the query for execution. If you are returning an IEnumerable
from a method, actual dictionary will be accessed after your method ends (and therefore, outside the lock).
The biggest problem with this code lies in the fact that you are passing the IDictionary
instance around, which means that other parts of your code can access it directly, and must lock on the same lock object instance very carefully. This is painful, error-prone to implement correctly, easy to break by accident, and hard to detect (race conditions may show symptoms on rare occasions).
You can do several things to improve the code:
Don't pass the IDictionary
around, but instead your own interface (preferred)
Make the dictionary a private member of a class which implements some custom interface, abstract all operations, and use a lock to ensure thread safety (or use a ConcurrentDictionary
under the hood). This way you are sure that all calls are being locked using the same lock instance.
Don't use the interface, but rather always pass the ConcurrentDictionary
This will be thread safe as long as you use specific atomic methods which a ConcurrentDictionary
provides (GetOrAdd
, AddOrUpdate
, etc.). Using simple access methods like you did in your example won't be thread safe, which means you still need to be careful with it. Additional downside is that you won't be able to abstract the functionality if you ever need to (it will be impossible to wrap/proxy the dictionary, and you won't be able to use other dictionary implementations).
Pass the IDictionary
around, and lock on the dictionary itself (not recommended at all).
This is an ugly hack, which is unfortunately used more often than it should be. It means you need to do this in every part of your app which accesses this dictionary, taking additional care to lock multiple operations along the way.
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