Question

In a multithreaded application. I have a bunch of function that loop through a collection to read the information. I also have a bunch of function that modifies that same collection.

I’m looking for a way to isolate all the read and the write together. I don’t want a write to be done while a read is in progress. I was thinking of using SyncLock on the collection object but this will block multiple read trying to work in parallel.

Answer 1

Have you considered ReaderWriterLockSlim? You might want to check that using it is faster than a simple Monitor lock though. Do not consider the older ReaderWriterLock. Here’s what Jeffrey Richter has to say about it:

The Microsoft® .NET Framework Class
Library includes a ReaderWriterLock
class in the System.Threading
namespace that lets you obtain
multiple-reader/single-writer
semantics. While it is nice that a
class like this exists, there are
several problems with its
implementation and I recommend you do
not use it.