Question

I’ve got a good old InvalidOperationException being thrown with the standard message

Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute.

The problem is, the enumerator isn’t modifying itself, for example:

private TRoute _copyRoute(TRoute route)
{
    TRoute tempRoute = new TRoute();
    tempRoute.Initialize(route.Resource);

    foreach (TVisit visit in route)
    {
       tempRoute.Add(visit);
    }
    tempRoute.EndLocation = route.EndLocation;
    return tempRoute;
}

My code is multi-threaded (circa 12-15 threads for this example) and each thread is supposed to be working on its own deep clone of a route. Obviously something is going wrong somewhere, but, my question is how do I track this down with so many threads? Reducing the number significantly stops the problem manifesting itself.

In this case my route instance is an IList so I can play around with adding things to the interface. Underneath it has it’s own List implementation.

EDIT

Just to add, I could ToArray() or ToList() this and maybe ignore the problem here but I don’t really want to do that, I want to locate the cause. For example:

If I change it to the following:

private TRoute _copyRoute(TRoute route)
{
    TRoute tempRoute = new TRoute();
    tempRoute.Initialize(route.Resource);

    foreach (TVisit visit in route.ToList())
    {
       tempRoute.Add(visit);
    }
    tempRoute.EndLocation = route.EndLocation;
    return tempRoute;
}

Then I fail on this Assert, because a chance has occurred just before ToList()… I need to try and find out where that change is occuring

TRoute tempRoute1 = CopyRoute(route1);
TRoute tempRoute2 = CopyRoute(route2);
Debug.Assert(tempRoute1.Count == route1.Count);

Answer 1

Here’s something you can use to wrap your IList<T> – it checks that it’s on the right thread on each write operation. Of course, it would still be unsafe to be iterating over this on one thread while writing on another, but I assume that’s not the problem. (You could always call CheckThread on all operations, not just the writing ones.)

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Threading;

class ThreadAffineList<T> : IList<T>
{
    private readonly Thread expectedThread;
    private readonly IList<T> list;

    public ThreadAffineList(IList<T> list)
    {
        this.list = list;
        this.expectedThread = Thread.CurrentThread;
    }

    private void CheckThread()
    {
        if (Thread.CurrentThread != expectedThread)
        {
            throw new InvalidOperationException("Incorrect thread");
        }
    }

    // Modification methods: delegate after checking thread
    public T this[int index]
    {
        get { return list[index]; }
        set
        {
            CheckThread();
            list[index] = value;
        }
    }

    public void Add(T item)
    {
        CheckThread();
        list.Add(item);
    }

    public void Clear()
    {
        CheckThread();
        list.Clear();
    }

    public void Insert(int index, T item)
    {
        CheckThread();
        list.Insert(index, item);
    }

    public bool Remove(T item)
    {
        CheckThread();
        return list.Remove(item);
    }

    public void RemoveAt(int index)
    {
        CheckThread();
        list.RemoveAt(index);
    }

    // Read-only members
    public int Count { get { return list.Count; } }
    public bool IsReadOnly { get { return list.IsReadOnly; } }

    public IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator()
    {
        return list.GetEnumerator();
    }

    IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
    {
        return GetEnumerator();
    }

    public bool Contains(T item)
    {
        return list.Contains(item);
    }

    public void CopyTo(T[] array, int arrayIndex)
    {
        list.CopyTo(array, arrayIndex);
    }

    public int IndexOf(T item)
    {
        return list.IndexOf(item);
    }
}