Thread safe - What does it mean?

[Guest]

Hi,

I'm wondering what this exactly means when I see it describing class in MSDN.

"Any instance members are not guaranteed to be thread safe."

What does this mean exactly & how could an "un thread safe" instance affect
an application.

Sorry for what may be a very simple question but i thought i'd get this
cleared up.

Many thanks for any answers
Ant

 

[Guest]

Just a thought...

Would it be analaogous to say in database terms, where a transaction can be
read multiple times but if it's not set to seralizable, various reads by
different 'threads' could take place & return different values if the data
had been updated by another thread?

Ant

 

[Vadym Stetsyak]

Hello, Ant!

A> I'm wondering what this exactly means when I see it describing class in
A> MSDN.

A> "Any instance members are not guaranteed to be thread safe."

A> What does this mean exactly & how could an "un thread safe" instance
A> affect an application.

A> Sorry for what may be a very simple question but i thought i'd get this
A> cleared up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread-safe

--
Regards, Vadym Stetsyak
www: http://vadmyst.blogspot.com

 

[Brian Gideon]

Ant,

Yes, but that's just one of many possibilities. The effects are mostly
unpredicatable and are usually difficult to diagnose and fix.

I recommend reading the following multipage articles on threading.

<http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/threads/index.shtml>
<http://www.albahari.com/threading>

Brian