Is there a better waiting pattern for c#?

Question

I've found myself coding this type of thing a few times.

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {    if (Thing.WaitingFor())    {       break;    }    Thread.Sleep(sleep_time); } if(!Thing.WaitingFor()) {    throw new ItDidntHappenException(); } 

It just looks like bad code, is there a better way of doing this / is it a symptom of bad design?

Answer 1

A much better way to implement this pattern is to have your Thing object expose an event on which the consumer can wait. For example a ManualResetEvent or AutoResetEvent. This greatly simplifies your consumer code to be the following

if (!Thing.ManualResetEvent.WaitOne(sleep_time)) {   throw new ItDidntHappen(); }  // It happened 

The code on the Thing side is also not really any more complex.

public sealed class Thing {   public readonly ManualResetEvent ManualResetEvent = new ManualResetEvent(false);    private void TheAction() {     ...     // Done.  Signal the listeners     ManualResetEvent.Set();   } }