Microsoft® Visual C#® .NET 2003 Unleashed

Using the Thread Pool for Asynchronous Programming

Many applications spend a lot of time doing nothing. Nothing, that is, except waiting for some kind of events or special circumstances to occur. After these events or circumstances have occurred, the application awakens, processes the events and then goes back to sleep. To make these tasks more efficient, .NET uses a thread pool. The following section explores the ThreadPool class and how to use it.

Explaining the WaitCallback Delegate

Similar to the ThreadStart delegate, WaitCallback is a wrapper around the program code that is to be executed by a thread pool:

WaitCallback workerThreadCallback = new WaitCallback(ThreadPoolWorkerThreadMethod);

Unlike the ThreadStart delegate, the WaitCallback ...