How I use threads?

This section discusses two aspects of thread usage. We first discuss threads as it applies to every Swing application — namely, why all code that deals with components needs to execute on a specific thread. We also discuss the invokeLater and invokeAndWait methods, which are used to ensure that code executes on this special thread. The rest of the section applies only to those who want to use additional threads to improve performance in their application. We also include a discussion of SwingWorker — a handy class used by many of our demos to offload time-consuming tasks. read less

Last couple of years processors had a rapid development especially on its speed. Nowadays a processor in the market is with a speed around 3GHz - 4GHz.when processor comes up to this level processor vendors such as Intel, AMD used to notified that processor can't be speeds up more and more with the environment they should use. Then they used to think about parallel processing, here's the point Hyper-threading technology comes in to action. Later they improved it to Dual Core then in to Core 2 Duo. the answer is to use the maximum performance and of the above processors (advantage of parallel processing) we have to use the threads with our C# applications. class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { // create thread start delegate instance - contains the method to execute by the thread ThreadStart ts=new ThreadStart(run); // create new thread Thread thrd=new Thread(ts); // start thread thrd.Start(); // makes the main thread sleep - let sub thread to run Thread.Sleep(1000); for (int t=10; t > 0; t--) { Console.WriteLine("Main Thread value is :" + t); Thread.Sleep(1000); } Console.WriteLine("Good Bye!!!I'm main Thread"); Console.ReadLine(); } // this method executed by a separate thread static void run() { for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { Console.WriteLine("Sub Thread value is : " + i); Thread.Sleep(1000); } Console.WriteLine("Good Bye!!!I'm Sub Thread"); } } Periodic operations from threads If you want to perform any method call in a perodic order then you can use the Timer class. Note : There are three timer classes availbale with .net framework class library one is in System namespace next is in System.Windows.Forms namespace and the last is in System. Threading namespace all of them are providing similar functionalities so please don't confuse them together, I'm talking here is about the System.Threading.Timer class Example: Using Timer class class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { // assign thread timer to do the job System.Threading.Timer thrdTimer = new Timer(run, 10, 0, 1000); // makes the main thread sleep - let sub thread to run Thread.Sleep(1000); Console.WriteLine("Good Bye!!!I'm main Thread"); Console.ReadLine(); } /* this method executed by a separate thread * this sholud be match with the TimerCallback * (parameters must be passed as an object) */ static void run(object args) { // cast our parameter int j = (int)args; Console.WriteLine("Hi I'm executing by timer you passed " + j); } } Here is the line we are assiging new timer to do the job,last parameter is the period to stay(in miliseconds) within the callbacks (here I have passed the 1000). // assign thread timer to do the job System.Threading.Timer thrdTimer = new System.Threading.Timer(run, 10, 0, 1000); See and how much .net framework class library had made the developer life easier. read less