Help with thread

[SMJT]

Folks,

I need some help understanding threads in .NET. I've only used the
background component worker up till now which is fine but now I need
to use multiple threads for an application which does lots of
processing.

I'm trying to start a thread from a form and part of this thread
updates a label on the form. For my simplified example I have a
single label (named label1) and a single button (named button1) on a
form, my code is below.

My code works fine, until I uncomment the line "theThread.Join()" in
the button1_Click event. If I uncomment this line, the program appears
to stall, i.e. nothing happens, the labels text is unchanged. Why is
this? Is the thread dead-locked? Is is it that I'm just doing
something silly?

Any help is much appreciated.

SMJT

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Threading;

namespace Simple_threadEx
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}

private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
ThreadStart op = new ThreadStart(LoopDeLoop);
Thread theThread = new Thread(op);
theThread.Start();
//theThread.Join();
}

private void LoopDeLoop()
{
for (int i = 1; i <= 100; i++)
{
SetText(i.ToString() + "% completed.");
Thread.Sleep(20);
}
}

public delegate void SetTextDelegate(string t);
public void SetText(string t)
{
if (label1.InvokeRequired)
{
SetTextDelegate del = new SetTextDelegate(SetText);
this.Invoke(del, new object[] { t });
}
else
label1.Text = t;
}
}
}

 

[Brian Gideon]

Folks,

I need some help understanding threads in .NET.  I've only used the
background component worker up till now which is fine but now I need
to use multiple threads for an application which does lots of
processing.

I'm trying to start a thread from a form and part of this thread
updates a label on the form.  For my simplified example I have a
single label (named label1) and a single button (named button1) on a
form, my code is below.

My code works fine, until I uncomment the line "theThread.Join()" in
the button1_Click event. If I uncomment this line, the program appears
to stall, i.e. nothing happens, the labels text is unchanged.  Why is
this?  Is the thread dead-locked?  Is is it that I'm just doing
something silly?

Any help is much appreciated.

SMJT

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Threading;

namespace Simple_threadEx
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            ThreadStart op = new ThreadStart(LoopDeLoop);
            Thread theThread = new Thread(op);
            theThread.Start();
            //theThread.Join();
        }

        private void LoopDeLoop()
        {
            for (int i = 1; i <= 100; i++)
            {
                SetText(i.ToString() + "% completed.");
                Thread.Sleep(20);
            }
        }

        public delegate void SetTextDelegate(string t);
        public void SetText(string t)
        {
            if (label1.InvokeRequired)
            {
                SetTextDelegate del = new SetTextDelegate(SetText);
                this.Invoke(del, new object[] { t });
            }
            else
                label1.Text = t;
        }
    }



}

Thread.Join is a blocking call. It waits until the thread completes
before returning to the caller. Your worker thread is calling Invoke
which is attempting to marshal a method call onto the UI thread. But,
the UI thread is blocked waiting for the worker thread to complete and
the worker thread is blocked waiting for the UI thread to become
available.