Question

class Program
{
    public static void Main(String[] args)
    {
        var c = new C();
        var thread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(c.F));
        thread.Start();
        Console.WriteLine("Exiting main, but the program won't quit yet...");
    }
}
class C
{
    public void F()
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Waiting {0}", i);
            Thread.Sleep(1000);
        }
        Console.WriteLine("Now the program will quit...");
    }
}

What’s going on under the hood with a console application that leads to it waiting for the other thread to finish before exiting (pointer to docs fine)?

Note: I know this is a basic question – I just always managed waiting for threads to finish before and never considered there was some infrastructure that did it for me…

Answer 1

A process ends when all foreground threads terminate

From Thread.IsBackground remarks on foreground threads vs background threads:

A thread is either a background thread or a foreground thread. Background threads are identical to foreground threads, except that background threads do not prevent a process from terminating. Once all foreground threads belonging to a process have terminated, the common language runtime ends the process. Any remaining background threads are stopped and do not complete.