Question

I’m looking at some code, and I see a line that looks like this:

// 1 if timer is executing, else 0
private int _inTimer;

This appears to be a binary flag. You are either in the timer, or you’re not.

Why would you want to declare this as an int and not a bool?

I can understand the scenario if you eventually want to add different states, but then I would argue using an enum.

Answer 1

You might want to use int instead of bool if you need to use atomic operations such as Interlocked.CompareExchange.

PS: I know about Interlocked.CompareExchange<T>, but it was introduced in .NET 3.5 and supports only reference types.