Question

What I have is a loop reading some data and when a set of circumstances are met I need to instantiate a thread. However, the created thread might not complete before the loop criteria is met and I need to create another thread doing the same thing. This is part of an ocr app and I haven’t done much thread work before.

while loop
  if(criteria)
  {
    observer = new BackgroundWorker();
    observer.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(observer_DoObserving);
    observer.RunWorkerAsync();
  }

the observer_DoObserving function calls the ocr app, waits for a response and then processes it appropriately and sets observer = null at the end. So how would I create multiple instances of the ‘observer’ thread. Of course instantly I thought of a class structure, is this an appropriate way to do it or is there another way that is appropriate for threading.

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks, R.

Answer 1

You could use the thread pool, specifically ThreadPool.

while (something)
{
    if (criteria)
    {
        // QueueUserWorkItem also has an overload that allows you to pass data
        // that data will then be passed into WorkerMethod when it is called
        ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new WaitCallback(WorkerMethod));
    }
}

// ...

private void WorkerMethod(object state)
{
    // do work here
}