Streamwriter, StringBuilder and Parallel loops - multithreading

Question

Sorry for big chunk of code, I couldn't explain that with less.Basically I'm trying to write into a file from many tasks.
Can you guys please tell me what I'm doing wrong? _streamWriter.WriteLine() throws the ArgumentOutOfRangeException.
class Program
{
private static LogBuilder _log = new LogBuilder();
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var acts = new List<Func<string>>();
var rnd = new Random();
for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++)
{
acts.Add(() =>
{
var delay = rnd.Next(300);
Thread.Sleep(delay);
return "act that that lasted "+delay;
});
}
Parallel.ForEach(acts, act =>
{
_log.Log.AppendLine(act.Invoke());
_log.Write();
});
}
}
public class LogBuilder : IDisposable
{
public StringBuilder Log = new StringBuilder();
private FileStream _fileStream;
private StreamWriter _streamWriter;
public LogBuilder()
{
_fileStream = new FileStream("log.txt", FileMode.Create, FileAccess.ReadWrite, FileShare.ReadWrite);
_streamWriter = new StreamWriter(_fileStream) { AutoFlush = true };
}
public void Write()
{
lock (Log)
{
if (Log.Length <= 0) return;
_streamWriter.WriteLine(Log.ToString()); //throws here. Although Log.Length is greater than zero
Log.Clear();
}
}
public void Dispose()
{
_streamWriter.Close(); _streamWriter.Dispose(); _fileStream.Close(); fileStream.Dispose();
}
}

Answer 1

This is not a bug in StringBuilder, it's a bug in your code. And the modification you shown in your followup answer (where you replace Log.String with a loop that extracts characters one at a time) doesn't fix it. It won't throw an exception any more, but it won't work properly either.
The problem is that you're using the StringBuilder in two places in your multithreaded code, and one of them does not attempt to lock it, meaning that reading can occur on one thread simultaneously with writing occurring on another. In particular, the problem is this line:
_log.Log.AppendLine(act.Invoke());
You're doing that inside your Parallel.ForEach. You are not making any attempt at synchronization here, even though this will run on multiple threads at once. So you've got two problems:
Multiple calls to AppendLine may be in progress simultaneously on multiple threads
One thread may attempt to be calling Log.ToString at the same time as one or more other threads are calling AppendLine
You'll only get one read at a time because you are using the lock keyword to synchronize those. The problem is that you're not also acquiring the same lock when calling AppendLine.
Your 'fix' isn't really a fix. You've succeeded only in making the problem harder to see. It will now merely go wrong in different and more subtle ways. For example, I'm assuming that your Write method still goes on to call Log.Clear after your for loop completes its final iteration. Well in between completing that final iteration, and making the call to Log.Clear, it's possible that some other thread will have got in another call to AppendLine because there's no synchronization on those calls to AppendLine.
The upshot is that you will sometimes miss stuff. Code will write things into the string builder that then get cleared out without ever being written to the stream writer.
Also, there's a pretty good chance of concurrent AppendLine calls causing problems. If you're lucky they will crash from time to time. (That's good because it makes it clear you have a problem to fix.) If you're unlucky, you'll just get data corruption from time to time - two threads may end up writing into the same place in the StringBuilder resulting either in a mess, or completely lost data.
Again, this is not a bug in StringBuilder. It is not designed to support being used simultaneously from multiple threads. It's your job to make sure that only one thread at a time does anything to any particular instance of StringBuilder. As the documentation for that class says, "Any instance members are not guaranteed to be thread safe."
Obviously you don't want to hold the lock while you call act.Invoke() because that's presumably the very work you want to parallelize. So I'd guess something like this might work better:
string result = act();
lock(_log.Log)
{
_log.Log.AppendLine(result);
}
However, if I left it there, I wouldn't really be helping you, because this looks very wrong to me.
If you ever find yourself locking a field in someone else's object, it's a sign of a design problem in your code. It would probably make more sense to modify the design, so that the LogBuilder.Write method accepts a string. To be honest, I'm not even sure why you're using a StringBuilder here at all, as you seem to use it just as a holding area for a string that you immediately write to a stream writer. What were you hoping the StringBuilder would add here? The following would be simpler and doesn't seem to lose anything (other than the original concurrency bugs):
public class LogBuilder : IDisposable
{
private readonly object _lock = new object();
private FileStream _fileStream;
private StreamWriter _streamWriter;
public LogBuilder()
{
_fileStream = new FileStream("log.txt", FileMode.Create, FileAccess.ReadWrite, FileShare.ReadWrite);
_streamWriter = new StreamWriter(_fileStream) { AutoFlush = true };
}
public void Write(string logLine)
{
lock (_lock)
{
_streamWriter.WriteLine(logLine);
}
}
public void Dispose()
{
_streamWriter.Dispose(); fileStream.Dispose();
}
}

Answer 2

I think the cause is because you are accessing the stringBuilder in the Parellel bracket
_log.Log.AppendLine(act.Invoke());
_log.Write();
and inside the LogBuilder you perform lock() to disallow memory allocation on stringBuidler. You are changing the streamwriter to handle the log in every character so would give the parellel process to unlock the memory allocation to stringBuilder.
Segregate the parallel process into distinct action would likely reduce the problem
Parallel.ForEach(acts, act =>
{
_log.Write(act.Invoke());
});
in the LogBuilder class
private readonly object _lock = new object();
public void Write(string logLines)
{
lock (_lock)
{
//_wr.WriteLine(logLines);
Console.WriteLine(logLines);
}
}

Answer 3

An alternate approach is to use TextWriter.Synchronized to wrap StreamWriter.
void Main(string[] args)
{
var rnd = new Random();
var writer = new StreamWriter(#"C:\temp\foo.txt");
var syncedWriter = TextWriter.Synchronized(writer);
var tasks = new List<Func<string>>();
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
{
int local_i = i; // get a local value, not closure-reference to i
tasks.Add(() =>
{
var delay = rnd.Next(5);
Thread.Sleep(delay);
return local_i.ToString() + " act that that lasted " + delay.ToString();
});
}
Parallel.ForEach(tasks, task =>
{
var value = task();
syncedWriter.WriteLine(value);
});
writer.Dispose();
}
Here are some of the synchronization helper classes
http://referencesource.microsoft.com/#q=Synchronized
System.Collections
static ArrayList Synchronized(ArrayList list)
static IList Synchronized(IList list)
static Hashtable Synchronized(Hashtable table)
static Queue Synchronized(Queue queue)
static SortedList Synchronized(SortedList list)
static Stack Synchronized(Stack stack)
System.Collections.Generic
static IList Synchronized(List list)
System.IO
static Stream Synchronized(Stream stream)
static TextReader Synchronized(TextReader reader)
static TextWriter Synchronized(TextWriter writer)
System.Text.RegularExpressions
static Match Synchronized(Match inner)
static Group Synchronized(Group inner)

Answer 4

It is seems that it isn't problem of Parallelism. It's StringBuilder's problem.
I have replaced:
_streamWriter.WriteLine(Log.ToString());
with:
for (int i = 0; i < Log.Length; i++)
{
_streamWriter.Write(Log[i]);
}
And it worked.
For future reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.text.stringbuilder(v=VS.100).aspx
Memory allocation section.