C# Thread safe fast(est) counter

Asked 2012-11-01T16:47:39.977

223

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()
{
    long result;
    lock (LOCK)
    {
        result = COUNTER++;
    }
    return result;
}

But are there faster alternatives?

c# multithreading thread-safety counter

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1 Answer

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);

answered 2012-11-01T16:50:43.303