When should the volatile keyword be used in C#?

Question

Can anyone provide a good explanation of the volatile keyword in C#? Which problems does it solve and which it doesn\'t? In which cases will it save me the use of locking?

Answer 1

The CLR likes to optimize instructions, so when you access a field in code it might not always access the current value of the field (it might be from the stack, etc). Marking a field as volatile ensures that the current value of the field is accessed by the instruction. This is useful when the value can be modified (in a non-locking scenario) by a concurrent thread in your program or some other code running in the operating system.

You obviously lose some optimization, but it does keep the code more simple.