https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22852251
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RussianUpdated, a follow-up blog post: Asynchronous coroutines with C# 8.0 and IAsyncEnumerable.
I use C# iterators as a replacement for coroutines, and it has been working great. I want to switch to async/await as I think the syntax is cleaner and it gives me type safety...
IMO, it's a very interesting question, although it took me awhile to fully understand it. Perhaps, you didn't provide enough sample code to illustrate the concept. A complete app would help, so I'll try to fill this gap first. The following code illustrates the usage pattern as I understood it, please correct me if I'm wrong:
using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
namespace ConsoleApplication
{
// https://stackoverflow.com/q/22852251/1768303
public class Program
{
class Resource : IDisposable
{
public void Dispose()
{
Console.WriteLine("Resource.Dispose");
}
~Resource()
{
Console.WriteLine("~Resource");
}
}
private IEnumerator Sleep(int milliseconds)
{
using (var resource = new Resource())
{
Stopwatch timer = Stopwatch.StartNew();
do
{
yield return null;
}
while (timer.ElapsedMilliseconds < milliseconds);
}
}
void EnumeratorTest()
{
var enumerator = Sleep(100);
enumerator.MoveNext();
Thread.Sleep(500);
//while (e.MoveNext());
((IDisposable)enumerator).Dispose();
}
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
new Program().EnumeratorTest();
GC.Collect(GC.MaxGeneration, GCCollectionMode.Forced, true);
GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
}
Here, Resource.Dispose gets called because of ((IDisposable)enumerator).Dispose(). If we don't call enumerator.Dispose(), then we'll have to uncomment //while (e.MoveNext()); and let the iterator finish gracefully, for proper unwinding.
Now, I think the best way to implement this with async/await is to use a custom awaiter:
using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
namespace ConsoleApplication
{
// https://stackoverflow.com/q/22852251/1768303
public class Program
{
class Resource : IDisposable
{
public void Dispose()
{
Console.WriteLine("Resource.Dispose");
}
~Resource()
{
Console.WriteLine("~Resource");
}
}
async Task SleepAsync(int milliseconds, Awaiter awaiter)
{
using (var resource = new Resource())
{
Stopwatch timer = Stopwatch.StartNew();
do
{
await awaiter;
}
while (timer.ElapsedMilliseconds < milliseconds);
}
Console.WriteLine("Exit SleepAsync");
}
void AwaiterTest()
{
var awaiter = new Awaiter();
var task = SleepAsync(100, awaiter);
awaiter.MoveNext();
Thread.Sleep(500);
//while (awaiter.MoveNext()) ;
awaiter.Dispose();
task.Dispose();
}
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
new Program().AwaiterTest();
GC.Collect(GC.MaxGeneration, GCCollectionMode.Forced, true);
GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();
Console.ReadLine();
}
// custom awaiter
public class Awaiter :
System.Runtime.CompilerServices.INotifyCompletion,
IDisposable
{
Action _continuation;
readonly CancellationTokenSource _cts = new CancellationTokenSource();
public Awaiter()
{
Console.WriteLine("Awaiter()");
}
~Awaiter()
{
Console.WriteLine("~Awaiter()");
}
public void Cancel()
{
_cts.Cancel();
}
// let the client observe cancellation
public CancellationToken Token { get { return _cts.Token; } }
// resume after await, called upon external event
public bool MoveNext()
{
if (_continuation == null)
return false;
var continuation = _continuation;
_continuation = null;
continuation();
return _continuation != null;
}
// custom Awaiter methods
public Awaiter GetAwaiter()
{
return this;
}
public bool IsCompleted
{
get { return false; }
}
public void GetResult()
{
this.Token.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();
}
// INotifyCompletion
public void OnCompleted(Action continuation)
{
_continuation = continuation;
}
// IDispose
public void Dispose()
{
Console.WriteLine("Awaiter.Dispose()");
if (_continuation != null)
{
Cancel();
MoveNext();
}
}
}
}
}
When it's time to unwind, I request the cancellation inside Awaiter.Dispose and drive the state machine to the next step (if there's a pending continuation). This leads to observing the cancellation inside Awaiter.GetResult (which is called by the compiler-generated code). That throws TaskCanceledException and further unwinds the using statement. So, the Resource gets properly disposed of. Finally, the task transitions to the cancelled state (task.IsCancelled == true).
IMO, this is a more simple and direct approach than installing a custom synchronization context on the current thread. It can be easily adapted for multithreading (some more details here).
This should indeed give you more freedom than with IEnumerator/yield. You could use try/catch inside your coroutine logic, and you can observe exceptions, cancellation and the result directly via the Task object.
Updated, AFAIK there is no analogy for the iterator's generated IDispose, when it comes to async state machine. You really have to drive the state machine to an end when you want to cancel/unwind it. If you want to account for some negligent use of try/catch preventing the cancellation, I think the best you could do is to check if _continuation is non-null inside Awaiter.Cancel (after MoveNext) and throw a fatal exception out-of-the-band (using a helper async void method).
