Delphi for .NET Developer’s Guide

Writing Thread-safe Code .NET Style

Writing a multithreaded application is pointless if multiple threads cannot interact in a predictable and bug-free manner. A body of code is said to be thread-safe if multiple threads can safely execute it without any side effects. One way of making a method or function thread-safe is to serialize access to it, thereby allowing only one thread to execute the code at a time.

Thread-safe code can be accomplished by following a few guidelines:

• Avoid variables and objects shared between threads. If this is not feasible, use a locking mechanism to serialize access.
• Use variables declared on the stack (for example, local variables).
• Use stateless routines by passing in all parameters that are needed to do its work. ...