Task is ignoring Thread.Sleep - c#-4.0

trying to grasp the TPL.
Just for fun I tried to create some Tasks with a random sleep to see how it was processed. I was targeting a fire and forget pattern..
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine("Demonstrating a successful transaction");
Random d = new Random();
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
var sleep = d.Next(100, 2000);
Action<int> succes = (int x) =>
{
Thread.Sleep(x);
Console.WriteLine("sleep={2}, Task={0}, Thread={1}: Begin successful transaction",
Task.CurrentId, Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId, x);
};
Task t1 = Task.Factory.StartNew(() => succes(sleep));
}
Console.ReadLine();
}
But I don't understand why it outputs all lines to the Console ignoring the Sleep(random)
Can someone explain that to me?

Important:
The TPL default TaskScheduler does not guarantee Thread per Task - one thread can be used for processing several tasks.
Calling Thread.Sleep might impact other tasks performance.
You can construct your task with the TaskCreationOptions.LongRunning hint this way the TaskScheduler will assign a dedicated thread for the task and it will be safe to block on it.

Your code uses the value of i instead of the generated random number. It does not ignore the sleep but rather sleeps between 0 and 10ms each iteration.
Try:
Thread.Sleep(sleep);

The sentence
Task t1 = Task.Factory.StartNew(() => succes(sleep));
Will create the Task and automatically start it, then will iterate again inside the for, without waiting the task to end its process. So when the second task is created and executed, the first one may be finished. I mean you are not waiting for the tasks to end:
You should try
Task t1 = Task.Factory.StartNew(() => succes(sleep));
t1.Wait();

Related

How to reject new tasks in newSingleThreadExecutor when another task is running

The actual scenario is Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor instance is executing a long-running task, I need to reject the new requests for this task until the completion of an existing one. while rejecting new requests, I need to simply send a message called "Thread is already running a task! Please wait until it completes".
Is it possible to implement using the newSingleThreadExecutor? Can Anyone Please help me...
The factory Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor() returns the equivalent to new ThreadPoolExecutor(1, 1, 0L, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS, new LinkedBlockingQueue<>()), except that it is wrapped in another ExecutorService to prevent other code from casting it to ThreadPoolExecutor and changing the configuration. The wrapper also adds finalization support which you should not rely on anyway.
So you can construct a similar executor and alter its setup to your needs.
ExecutorService es = new ThreadPoolExecutor(1, 1, 0L, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS,
new SynchronousQueue<>());
A SynchronousQueue has no capacity but can only hand elements over to already waiting consumers, i.e. will accept a Runnable only when there is already an idle worker thread. When the queue rejects the new job, the ThreadPoolExecutor will check its configured thread count and either, start a worker thread (at most one here) or call into a RejectedExecutionHandler. The default handler does throw a RejectedExecutionException, so we’re basically done with your requirements here.
The finetuning we can do, is to change the message of the RejectedExecutionException by providing our own RejectedExecutionHandler:
ExecutorService es = new ThreadPoolExecutor(1, 1, 0L, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS,
new SynchronousQueue<>(),
(runnable, executor) -> { throw new RejectedExecutionException(
"Thread is already running a task! Please wait until it completes");
});
When the amount of code having access to the ExecutorService is rather small and you can trust it to not doing things like casting es back to ThreadPoolExecutor and mess around, you can keep it this way. Otherwise, you can protect it against such modifications by wrapping it:
ExecutorService es = Executors.unconfigurableExecutorService(
new ThreadPoolExecutor(1, 1, 200L, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS, new SynchronousQueue<>(),
(runnable, executor) -> { throw new RejectedExecutionException(
"Thread is already running a task! Please wait until it completes");
}));
Now we are as close as we can get to the behavior of Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor() plus your deviations, without implementing our own executor. The only thing this executor doesn’t have, is finalization support, but as this bug report suggests, it’s not a good idea to have it anyway. Take care to invoke shutdown() on it at the end of its lifetime (unless it overlaps with a call to System.exit(…) anyway).
The behavior can be tested with a program like
Future<?> previous = null;
for(int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
int jobID = i;
System.out.println(jobID + " Trying to submit job");
try {
Future<?> next = es.submit(() -> {
Thread.sleep(200);
System.out.println("job " + jobID);
return null;
});
if(previous != null && !previous.isDone()) {
throw new AssertionError("new job accepted before previous completed");
}
previous = next;
} catch(RejectedExecutionException ex) {
System.out.println("rejected: " + ex);
}
Thread.sleep(ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextInt(90, 190));
}
This program attempts to submit multiple jobs and will throw an AssertionError if a job is accepted while the previous is not completed.

.wait() on a task in c++/cx throws exception

I have a function which calls Concurrency::create_task to perform some work in the background. Inside that task, there is a need to call a connectAsync method on the StreamSocket class in order to connect a socket to a device. Once the device is connected, I need to grab some references to things inside the connected socket (like input and output streams).
Since it is an asynchronous method and will return an IAsyncAction, I need to create another task on the connectAsync function that I can wait on. This works without waiting, but complications arise when I try to wait() on this inner task in order to error check.
Concurrency::create_task( Windows::Devices::Bluetooth::Rfcomm::RfcommDeviceService::FromIdAsync( device_->Id ) )
.then( [ this ]( Windows::Devices::Bluetooth::Rfcomm::RfcommDeviceService ^device_service_ )
{
_device_service = device_service_;
_stream_socket = ref new Windows::Networking::Sockets::StreamSocket();
// Connect the socket
auto inner_task = Concurrency::create_task( _stream_socket->ConnectAsync(
_device_service->ConnectionHostName,
_device_service->ConnectionServiceName,
Windows::Networking::Sockets::SocketProtectionLevel::BluetoothEncryptionAllowNullAuthentication ) )
.then( [ this ]()
{
//grab references to streams, other things.
} ).wait(); //throws exception here, but task executes
Basically, I have figured out that the same thread (presumably the UI) that creates the initial task to connect, also executes that task AND the inner task. Whenever I attempt to call .wait() on the inner task from the outer one, I immediately get an exception. However, the inner task will then finish and connect successfully to the device.
Why are my async chains executing on the UI thread? How can i properly wait on these tasks?
In general you should avoid .wait() and just continue the asynchronous chain. If you need to block for some reason, the only fool-proof mechanism would be to explicitly run your code from a background thread (eg, the WinRT thread pool).
You could try using the .then() overload that takes a task_options and pass concurrency::task_options(concurrency::task_continuation_context::use_arbitrary()), but that doesn't guarantee the continuation will run on another thread; it just says that it's OK if it does so -- see documentation here.
You could set an event and have the main thread wait for it. I have done this with some IO async operations. Here is a basic example of using the thread pool, using an event to wait on the work:
TEST_METHOD(ThreadpoolEventTestCppCx)
{
Microsoft::WRL::Wrappers::Event m_logFileCreatedEvent;
m_logFileCreatedEvent.Attach(CreateEventEx(nullptr, nullptr, CREATE_EVENT_MANUAL_RESET, WRITE_OWNER | EVENT_ALL_ACCESS));
long x = 10000000;
auto workItem = ref new WorkItemHandler(
[&m_logFileCreatedEvent, &x](Windows::Foundation::IAsyncAction^ workItem)
{
while (x--);
SetEvent(m_logFileCreatedEvent.Get());
});
auto asyncAction = ThreadPool::RunAsync(workItem);
WaitForSingleObjectEx(m_logFileCreatedEvent.Get(), INFINITE, FALSE);
long i = x;
}
Here is a similar example except it includes a bit of Windows Runtime async IO:
TEST_METHOD(AsyncOnThreadPoolUsingEvent)
{
std::shared_ptr<Concurrency::event> _completed = std::make_shared<Concurrency::event>();
int i;
auto workItem = ref new WorkItemHandler(
[_completed, &i](Windows::Foundation::IAsyncAction^ workItem)
{
Windows::Storage::StorageFolder^ _picturesLibrary = Windows::Storage::KnownFolders::PicturesLibrary;
Concurrency::task<Windows::Storage::StorageFile^> _getFileObjectTask(_picturesLibrary->GetFileAsync(L"art.bmp"));
auto _task2 = _getFileObjectTask.then([_completed, &i](Windows::Storage::StorageFile^ file)
{
i = 90210;
_completed->set();
});
});
auto asyncAction = ThreadPool::RunAsync(workItem);
_completed->wait();
int j = i;
}
I tried using an event to wait on Windows Runtime Async work, but it blocked. That's why I had to use the threadpool.

Interrupt parallel Stream execution

Consider this code :
Thread thread = new Thread(() -> tasks.parallelStream().forEach(Runnable::run));
tasks are a list of Runnables that should be executed in parallel.
When we start this thread, and it begins its execution, then depending on some calculations we need to interrupt (cancel) all those tasks.
Interrupting the Thread will only stop one of exections. How do we handle others? or maybe Streams should not be used that way? or you know a better solution?
You can use a ForkJoinPool to interrupt the threads:
#Test
public void testInterruptParallelStream() throws Exception {
final AtomicReference<InterruptedException> exc = new AtomicReference<>();
final ForkJoinPool forkJoinPool = new ForkJoinPool(4);
// use the pool with a parallel stream to execute some tasks
forkJoinPool.submit(() -> {
Stream.generate(Object::new).parallel().forEach(obj -> {
synchronized (obj) {
try {
// task that is blocking
obj.wait();
} catch (final InterruptedException e) {
exc.set(e);
}
}
});
});
// wait until the stream got started
Threads.sleep(500);
// now we want to interrupt the task execution
forkJoinPool.shutdownNow();
// wait for the interrupt to occur
Threads.sleep(500);
// check that we really got an interruption in the parallel stream threads
assertTrue(exc.get() instanceof InterruptedException);
}
The worker threads do really get interrupted, terminating a blocking operation. You can also call shutdown() within the Consumer.
Note that those sleeps might not be tweaked for a proper unit test, you might have better ideas to just wait as necessary. But it is enough to show that it is working.
You aren't actually running the Runnables on the Thread you are creating. You are running a thread which will submit to a pool, so:
Thread thread = new Thread(() -> tasks.parallelStream().forEach(Runnable::run));
In this example you are in lesser terms doing
List<Runnable> tasks = ...;
Thread thread = new Thread(new Runnable(){
public void run(){
for(Runnable r : tasks){
ForkJoinPool.commonPool().submit(r);
}
}
});
This is because you are using a parallelStream that delegates to a common pool when handling parallel executions.
As far as I know, you cannot get a handle of the Threads that are executing your tasks with a parallelStream so may be out of luck. You can always do tricky stuff to get the thread but probably isn't the best idea to do so.
Something like the following should work for you:
AtomicBoolean shouldCancel = new AtomicBoolean();
...
tasks.parallelStream().allMatch(task->{
task.run();
return !shouldCancel.get();
});
The documentation for the method allMatch specifically says that it "may not evaluate the predicate on all elements if not necessary for determining the result." So if the predicate doesn't match when you want to cancel, then it doesn't need to evaluate any more. Additionally, you can check the return result to see if the loop was cancelled or not.

How to kill a thread from another thread in vala

I have a main thread which creates another thread to perform some job.
main thread has a reference to that thread. How do I kill that thread forcefully some time later, even if thread is still operating. I cant find a proper function call that does that.
any help would be appreciable.
The original problem that I want to solve is I created a thread a thread to perform a CPU bound operation that may take 1 second to complete or may be 10 hours. I cant predict how much time it is going to take. If it is taking too much time, I want it to gracefully abandon the job when/ if I want. can I somehow communicate this message to that thread??
Assuming you're talking about a GLib.Thread, you can't. Even if you could, you probably wouldn't want to, since you would likely end up leaking a significant amount of memory.
What you're supposed to do is request that the thread kill itself. Generally this is done by using a variable to indicate whether or not it has been requested that the operation stop at the earliest opportunity. GLib.Cancellable is designed for this purpose, and it integrates with the I/O operations in GIO.
Example:
private static int main (string[] args) {
GLib.Cancellable cancellable = new GLib.Cancellable ();
new GLib.Thread<int> (null, () => {
try {
for ( int i = 0 ; i < 16 ; i++ ) {
cancellable.set_error_if_cancelled ();
GLib.debug ("%d", i);
GLib.Thread.usleep ((ulong) GLib.TimeSpan.MILLISECOND * 100);
}
return 0;
} catch ( GLib.Error e ) {
GLib.warning (e.message);
return -1;
}
});
GLib.Thread.usleep ((ulong) GLib.TimeSpan.SECOND);
cancellable.cancel ();
/* Make sure the thread has some time to cancel. In an application
* with a UI you probably wouldn't need to do this artificially,
* since the entire application probably wouldn't exit immediately
* after cancelling the thread (otherwise why bother cancelling the
* thread? Just exit the program) */
GLib.Thread.usleep ((ulong) GLib.TimeSpan.MILLISECOND * 150);
return 0;
}

Parallel Task advice

I am trying to use the parallel task library to kick off a number of tasks like this:
var workTasks = _schedules.Where(x => x.Task.Enabled);
_tasks = new Task[workTasks.Count()];
_cancellationTokenSource = new CancellationTokenSource();
_cancellationTokenSource.Token.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();
int i = 0;
foreach (var schedule in _schedules.Where(x => x.Task.Enabled))
{
_log.InfoFormat("Reading task information for task {0}", schedule.Task.Name);
if(!schedule.Task.Enabled)
{
_log.InfoFormat("task {0} disabled.", schedule.Task.Name);
i++;
continue;
}
schedule.Task.ServiceStarted = true;
_tasks[i] = Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
schedule.Task.Run()
, _cancellationTokenSource.Token);
i++;
_log.InfoFormat("task {0} has been added to the worker threads and has been started.", schedule.Task.Name);
}
I want these tasks to sleep and then wake up every 5 minutes and do their stuff, at the moment I am using Thread.Sleep in the Schedule object whose Run method is the Action that is passed into StartNew as an argument like this:
_tasks[i] = Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
schedule.Task.Run()
, _cancellationTokenSource.Token);
I read somewhere that Thread.Sleep is a bad solution for this. Can anyone recommend a better approach?
By my understanding, Thread.Sleep is bad generally, because it force-shifts everything out of memory even when that's not necessary. It won't be a big deal in most cases, but it could be a performance issue.
I'm in the habit of using this snippet instead:
new System.Threading.EventWaitHandle(false, EventResetMode.ManualReset).WaitOne(1000);
Fits on one line, and isn't overly complicated -- it creates an event handle that will never be set, and then waits for the full timeout period before continuing.
Anyway, if you're just trying to have something repeat every 5 minutes, a better approach would probably be to use a Timer. You could even make a class to neatly wrap everything if your repeated work methods are already factored out:
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
public class WorkRepeater
{
Timer m_Timer;
WorkRepeater(Action workToRepeat, TimeSpan interval)
{
m_Timer = new System.Timers.Timer((double)Interval.Milliseconds);
m_Timer.Elapsed +=
new System.Timers.ElapsedEventHandler((o, ea) => WorkToRepeat());
}
public void Start()
{
m_Timer.Start();
}
public void Stop()
{
m_Timer.Stop();
}
}
Bad solution are Tasks here. Task should be used for short living operations, like asynch IO. If you want to control life time of task you should use Thread and sleep as much as you like, because Thread is individual, but Tasks are rotated in thread pool which is shared.

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