singleton pattern in vb

Question

I am normally a c# programmer but am now working in VB for this one project when I use to set up a singleton class I would follow the Jon Skeet model

public sealed class Singleton
{
    static Singleton instance = null;
    static readonly object padlock = new object();

    Singleton()
    {
    }

    public static Singleton Instance
    {
        get
        {
            lock (padlock)
            {
                if (instance == null)
                {
                    instance = new Singleton();
                }
                return instance;
            }
        }
    }

    //Added to illustrate the point
    public static void a()
    {
    }

    public void b()
    {
    }

} 

or one of the variations now if I write the statement in c#

Singleton.Instance What procedures is all of the members that are not static, b but not a.

Now when I do the same in VB

Private Shared _instance As StackTracker
Private Shared ReadOnly _lock As Object = New Object()
Private Sub New()
    _WorkingStack = New Stack(Of MethodObject)
    _HistoryStack = New Queue(Of MethodObject)
End Sub

Public Shared ReadOnly Property Instance() As StackTracker
    Get
        SyncLock _lock
            If (_instance Is Nothing) Then
                _instance = New StackTracker()
            End If
        End SyncLock

        Return _instance
    End Get

End Property

I get StackTracker.Instance.Instance and it keeps going, while it is not the end of the world it looks bad.

Question is there a way in VB to hide the second instance so the user can not recursively call Instance?

Answer 1

Here's the full code:

Public NotInheritable Class MySingleton
    Private Shared ReadOnly _instance As New Lazy(Of MySingleton)(Function() New
        MySingleton(), System.Threading.LazyThreadSafetyMode.ExecutionAndPublication)

    Private Sub New()
    End Sub

    Public Shared ReadOnly Property Instance() As MySingleton
        Get
            Return _instance.Value
        End Get
    End Property
End Class

Then to use this class, get the instance using:

Dim theSingleton As MySingleton = MySingleton.Instance

Answer 2

The original question was not about how to implement the singleton pattern, but referring to the fact that in C# it's a compiler error to try to access a static member via an instance. In the current VB it's a warning.

Solution: You can change the project compiler settings to "Treat all warnings as errors", but I don't know any way to explicitly treat just warning 42025 as an error.

That being said, there is also a much simpler way to implement singletons in VB:

public class Singleton
    private sub new()
    end sub

    public shared readonly property Instance as Singleton
        get
            static INST as Singleton = new Singleton
            return INST
        end get
    end property
end class

This relies on VB thread-safe single initialization of static variables which is a feature not found in C#. The line of code beginning with the word "static" is only evaluated once even if the Instance property is accessed many times from many threads.