Question

I have an array that is a list of files in a folder, I’m processing the files and renaming them. It takes about 15 minutes to rename them all, this is done daily. I currently have 1 Backgroundworker to handle this and update the UI.

My question is, this: How can I use more than 1 Backgroundworker to use more than 25% of the CPU to do this?

Split the array into 3 parts and call 3 separate workers to do their part?

Answer 1

If you’re using .NET 4.0 then you can use Parallel Extensions which will effectively do this for you – you’d just call

Parallel.ForEach(files, file =>
{
    // Call file processor here
});

Note that if your task is heavily IO bound, using multiple threads may slow it down instead of speeding it up.