Alternatives to Thread.Sleep()

Question

Every N minutes we want to run through a list of tasks. So we\'ve created a task executor with a

do { DoWork(); }while(!stopRequested)

No

Answer 1

I would use a waiting timer which signals an AutoResetEvent. Your thread should wait for this WaitHandle object. Here is a small console app showing this approach:

class Program {
    const int TimerPeriod = 5;
    static System.Threading.Timer timer;
    static AutoResetEvent ev;
    static void Main(string[] args) 
    {
        ThreadStart start = new ThreadStart(SomeThreadMethod);
        Thread thr = new Thread(start);
        thr.Name = "background";
        thr.IsBackground = true;
        ev = new AutoResetEvent(false);
        timer = new System.Threading.Timer(
            Timer_TimerCallback, ev, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(TimerPeriod), TimeSpan.Zero);
        thr.Start();
        Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Timer started at {0}", DateTime.Now));
        Console.ReadLine();
    }

    static void Timer_TimerCallback(object state) {
        AutoResetEvent ev =  state as AutoResetEvent;
        Console.WriteLine(string.Format
             ("Timer's callback method is executed at {0}, Thread: ", 
             new object[] { DateTime.Now, Thread.CurrentThread.Name}));
        ev.Set();
    }

    static void SomeThreadMethod() {
        WaitHandle.WaitAll(new WaitHandle[] { ev });
        Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Thread is running at {0}", DateTime.Now));
    }
}