Question

I have a few infinite generator methods, including some long-running and infinitely-long-running generators.

IEnumerable<T> ExampleOne() { 
    while(true) // this one blocks for a few seconds at a time
        yield return LongRunningFunction();
}
IEnumerable<T> ExampleTwo() { 
    while(true) //this one blocks for a really long time
        yield return OtherLongRunningFunction();
}

My goal is to have an infinite sequence that combines the items from the two examples. Here’s what I tried, using PLINQ:

 IEnumerable<T> combined =  new[] { ExampleOne(), ExampleTwo() }
           .AsParallel()
           .WithMergeOptions(ParallelMergeOptions.NotBuffered)
           .WithExecutionMode(ParallelExecutionMode.ForceParallelism)
           .SelectMany(source => source.GetRequests());

This seems appropriately combines the two IEnumerables into a new one, with items from IEnumerable #1 and #2 being available whenever they appear in either of the two source IEnumerables:

//assuming ExampleTwo yields TWO but happens roughly 5 times 
//less often then ExampleOne
Example output:  one one one one one TWO one one one one one one TWO

However, it seems like sometimes (usually after many hours of running) OtherLongRunningFunction() will go for a long period of time without returning, and under conditions that are hard to reproduce, the combined sequence will block on it rather than continuing to return results from the first LongRunningFunction. It seems that although the combined parallel query started off using two threads, it decided to switch to one thread later on.

My first thought was “this is probably a job for RX Observable.Merge and not for PLINQ.” But I’d appreciate both answers that show correct alternative ways to handle this situation as well as explanations about the mechanics of how PLINQ can change the degree of parallelism hours after the the start of a query.

Answer 1

Here’s the Rx way to do it, and indeed, it does use Merge:

IObservable<T> LongRunningFunction()
{
    return Observable.Start(() => {
        // Calculate some stuff
        return blah;
    }, Scheduler.TaskPoolScheduler);
}

Observable.Merge(
    Observable.Defer(LongRunningFunction).Repeat(),
    Observable.Defer(OtherLongRunningFunction).Repeat(),
).Subscribe(x => {
    Console.WriteLine("An item: {0}", x);
});