Visual Basic® 2010 Unleashed

BlockingCollection(Of T)

The BlockingCollection(Of T) is a special concurrent collection. At the highest level the collection has two characteristics. The first is that if a thread attempts to retrieve items from the collection while it is empty, the thread is blocked until some items are added to the collection; the second one is that if a thread attempts to add items to the collection, but this has reached the maximum number of items possible, the thread is blocked until some space is freed in the collection. Another interesting feature is completion; you can mark the collection as complete so that no other items can be added. This is accomplished via the CompleteAdding instance method. After you invoke this method, if a thread attempts to ...