Is there a way to wake a sleeping thread?

Question

Is there a way to wake a sleeping thread in C#? So, have it sleep for either a long time and wake it when you want work processed?

Answer 1

The best solution would be to use Task objects with the default TaskFactory. This API (introduced in .NET 4.0) uses a pool of threads with work-stealing queues and all that fancy stuff.

If .NET 4.0 isn't available, then use the ThreadPool, which has a built-in work queue (which does some pool balancing but not on the same scope as the 4.0 thread pool).

If you really must do it yourself, then I recommend a BlockingCollection, which is a blocking consumer/producer queue added in .NET 4.0.

If you really must do it yourself and can't use .NET 4.0, then you can use a ManualResetEvent or AutoResetEvent along with a lock-protected queue of work.