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c#.netasynchronousasync-awaittask
Ayushmati
Ayushmati

Reputation: 1592

Using Task.Wait instead of await for async programming

The .Net article on Tasks shows two following two code snippets, one using await and the other using Task.Wait and says both are "functionally equivalent".

Isn't that technically incorrect then? Can someone please clarify?

Also if Tasks are supposed to be asynchronous and form the basis for Asynchronous Programming (TPL), why would ASP.Net allow a synchronous Wait on them anyway? Doesn't that kind of violate their main utility?

using System;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

public class Example
{
   public static async Task Main()
   {
      await Task.Run( () => {
                                  // Just loop.
                                  int ctr = 0;
                                  for (ctr = 0; ctr <= 1000000; ctr++)
                                  {}
                                  Console.WriteLine("Finished {0} loop iterations",
                                                    ctr);
                               } );
   }
}
// The example displays the following output:
//        Finished 1000001 loop iterations

using System;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

public class Example
{
   public static void Main()
   {
      Task t = Task.Factory.StartNew( () => {
                                  // Just loop.
                                  int ctr = 0;
                                  for (ctr = 0; ctr <= 1000000; ctr++)
                                  {}
                                  Console.WriteLine("Finished {0} loop iterations",
                                                    ctr);
                               } );
      t.Wait();
   }
}
// The example displays the following output:
//        Finished 1000001 loop iterations

The article should explain the differences between the two calls clearly.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 5934

Answers (1)

Servy
Servy

Reputation: 203802

Isn't that technically incorrect then?

No, because it's being very specific. It's not saying that writing an async method that awaits a task is always the same as just synchronously waiting on that task, it's only referring to very specifically the case of an async Main method as an entry point for the application. When you make the Main method async, it just synchronously waits on the returned task, making it functionally equivalent to just synchronously waiting on the task inside the method instead of making the method async only in that one exact situation.

(You could also make an argument that's it's just trying to say that StartNew with the parameters provided and Run are equivalent, and isn't intending to refer to the difference between the method being async versus synchronously waiting.)

why would ASP.Net allow a synchronous Wait on them anyway?

Task wasn't created exclusively to be a representation of work done asynchronously. It was designed to do that and also to synchronously work in parallel using multiple threads. When you're using tasks for asynchrony, you should basically never be using Wait or other synchronous blocking mechanism, but if you're using it to do multithreaded work synchronously, it's useful. You could make a [good] argument that they should have kept those concepts separate, but they didn't, and it's way too late to change it now.

Doesn't that kind of violate their main utility?

Yes, yes it does. Which is why I'm not a fan of this implementation, and would have preferred they'd implemented it differently. But they didn't.

The article should explain the differences between the two calls clearly.

Yes it should.

Upvotes: 6

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