user332724
user332724

Reputation:

Difference between Delegate.BeginInvoke and Thread.Start

Existing related questions here talk about differences between:

But what are the differences between Delegate.BeginInvoke and Thread.Start?

Upvotes: 6

Views: 5156

Answers (2)

Simon P Stevens
Simon P Stevens

Reputation: 27509

See this question: differences in the different ways to make concurrent programs for more info on the differences between the various ways of running concurrent code in .net.

Upvotes: 2

Dean Harding
Dean Harding

Reputation: 72668

Thread.Start starts a new OS thread to execute the delegate. When the delegate returns, the thread is destroyed. This is quite a heavy-weight operation (starting and destroying a thread) so you typically only do it if the method is going to be long-running.

Delegate.BeginInvoke will call the delegate on a thread pool thread. Once the method returns, the thread is returned to the pool to be reused by another task. The advantage of this is that queueing a method to the thread pool is relatively light-weight because you don't have to spin up a whole new thread every time.

Control.BeginInvoke invokes the method on the thread for the control. UI components are inherently single-threaded and every interaction with a UI control must be done on the thread that created it. Control.BeginInvoke is a handy way to do that.

Upvotes: 17

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