c# - Wait for pooled threads to complete

Question

I'm sorry for a redundant question. However, I've found many solutions to my problem but none of them are very well explained. I'm hoping that it will be made clear, here.

My C# application's main thread spawns 1..n background workers using the ThreadPool. I wish for the original thread to lock until all of the workers have completed. I have researched the ManualResetEvent in particular but I'm not clear on it's use.

In pseudo:

foreach( var o in collection )
{
  queue new worker(o);
}

while( workers not completed ) { continue; }

If necessary, I will know the number of workers that are about to be queued before hand.

Answer 1

Try this. The function takes in a list of Action delegates. It will add a ThreadPool worker entry for each item in the list. It will wait for every action to complete before returning.

public static void SpawnAndWait(IEnumerable<Action> actions)
{
    var list = actions.ToList();
    var handles = new ManualResetEvent[actions.Count()];
    for (var i = 0; i < list.Count; i++)
    {
        handles[i] = new ManualResetEvent(false);
        var currentAction = list[i];
        var currentHandle = handles[i];
        Action wrappedAction = () => { try { currentAction(); } finally { currentHandle.Set(); } };
        ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(x => wrappedAction());
    }

    WaitHandle.WaitAll(handles);
}