c# 5.0 - What's the new C# await feature do?

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Answer 1

They just talked about this at PDC yesterday!

Await is used in conjunction with Tasks (parallel programming) in .NET. It's a keyword being introduced in the next version of .NET. It more or less lets you "pause" the execution of a method to wait for the Task to complete execution. Here's a brief example:

//create and run a new task  
Task<DataTable> dataTask = new Task<DataTable>(SomeCrazyDatabaseOperation);

//run some other code immediately after this task is started and running  
ShowLoaderControl();  
StartStoryboard();

//this will actually "pause" the code execution until the task completes.  It doesn't lock the thread, but rather waits for the result, similar to an async callback  
// please so also note, that the task needs to be started before it can be awaited. Otherwise it will never return
dataTask.Start();
DataTable table = await dataTask;

//Now we can perform operations on the Task result, as if we're executing code after the async operation completed  
listBoxControl.DataContext = table;  
StopStoryboard();  
HideLoaderControl();