Question

I find naming threads to be very useful when debugging.

I can see no way to name a thread using arguments to Task.Factory.StartNew()

So is it acceptable to name the thread explicitly in the task? eg:

private void MyFunc()
{
    Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
    {
        Thread.CurrentThread.Name = "Foobulizer";
        Foobulize();
    });
}

However, I appreciate that threads may be reused for different tasks, so would I need to explicitly reset the thread name at the end of the task? This feels pretty hacky so I’m thinking this is probably a bad idea, or there’s a proper way to do it?

Answer 1

You cannot do this since multiple Tasks can share the same or multiple threads depending on ThreadPool state in a given moment of time. Basically, Task is not a Thread. It’s just a high level abstraction for the asynchronous operation. You can use the Task.Id property, but keep in mind that Id is readonly and of int type, so you can’t assign custom user-friendly name.

Task IDs are assigned on-demand and do not necessarily represent the
order in the which Task instances were created

Take a look at the built-in Visual Studio 2010 Parallel Debugging features. Perhaps you’ll find another approach: Walkthrough: Debugging a Parallel Application

Parallel Tasks Window:

For each running Task, you can read its ID, which is returned by the
same-named property, the ID and name of the thread that runs it, its
location (hovering over that displays a tooltip that has the whole
call stack). Also, under the Task column, you can see the method that
was passed into the task; in other words, the starting point