C# Thread safe fast(est) counter

Question

What is the way to obtain a thread safe counter in C# with best possible performance?

This is as simple as it gets:

public static long GetNextValue()         


        

Answer 1

I suggest you use .NET's built in interlock increment in the System.Threading library.

The following code will increment a long variable by reference and is completely thread safe:

Interlocked.Increment(ref myNum);

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd78zt0c.aspx