Question

Essentially, I am working with this:

var data = input.AsParallel();
List<String> output = new List<String>();

Parallel.ForEach<String>(data, line => {
    String outputLine = ""; 
    // ** Do something with "line" and store result in "outputLine" **

    // Additionally, there are some this.Invoke statements for updating UI

    output.Add(outputLine);
});

Input is a List<String> object. The ForEach() statement does some processing on each value, updates the UI, and adds the result to the output List. Is there anything inherently wrong with this?

Notes:

• Output order is unimportant

Update:

Based on feedback I’ve gotten, I’ve added a manual lock to the output.Add statement, as well as to the UI updating code.

Answer 1

Yes; List<T> is not thread safe, so adding to it ad-hoc from arbitrary threads (quite possibly at the same time) is doomed. You should use a thread-safe list instead, or add locking manually. Or maybe there is a Parallel.ToList.

Also, if it matters: insertion order will not be guaranteed.

This version is safe, though:

var output = new string[data.Count];

Parallel.ForEach<String>(data, (line,state,index) =>
{
    String outputLine = index.ToString();
    // ** Do something with "line" and store result in "outputLine" **

    // Additionally, there are some this.Invoke statements for updating UI
    output[index] = outputLine;
});

here we are using index to update a different array index per parallel call.