C# is it possible to change priority of acquiring a lock?

Question

If there are multiple threads all waiting on the same lock is it possible to have the Main thread have higher priority in acquiring the lock. Meaning that if worker threads go to the lock statement before the main thread, the main thread would acquire the lock before the other threads that were already waiting on it.

Answer 1

No, the lock statement maps to System.Threading.Monitor.Enter() (MSDN) and there is no overload that accepts a priority parameter.

The closest thing I can think of is a ReaderWriterLock(Slim) but I would seriously reconsider the design that leads to this request. There probably are better ways to achieve what you need.

Answer 2

Through a native lock statement, no. Through your own custom locking mechanism, sure, if you're willing to spend the time and effort to develop it.

Here's my draft a a solution. It may or may not work, and may not be super efficient, but it's at least a starting place:

public class Lock
{
    bool locked = false;

    private object key = new object();
    SortedDictionary<int, Queue<ManualResetEvent>> notifiers =
        new SortedDictionary<int, Queue<ManualResetEvent>>();

    ManualResetEvent specialNotifier = null;

    public void Lock()
    {
        lock (key)
        {
            if (locked)
            {
                ManualResetEvent notifier = new ManualResetEvent(false);

                int priority = getPriorityForThread();

                Queue<ManualResetEvent> queue = notifiers[priority];
                if (queue == null)
                {
                    queue = new Queue<ManualResetEvent>();
                    notifiers[priority] = queue;
                }

                queue.Enqueue(notifier);

                notifier.WaitOne();
            }
            else
            {
                locked = true;
            }
        }
    }

    private static int getPriorityForThread()
    {
        return 0;
    }

    public void Release()
    {
        lock (key)
        {
            foreach (var queue in notifiers.Values)
            {
                if (queue.Any())
                {
                    var notifier = queue.Dequeue();
                    notifier.Set();
                    return;
                }
            }
            locked = false;
        }
    }
}