Async processing from scratch

Question

I have the following class which is named Pluck:

internal static void Work()
{
    Task[] tasks = new Task[5];
    for (int i = 0; i < tasks.Length; i++)
    {
        tasks[i] = SumAsync();
    }
    Task.WhenAll(tasks);
}

private static async Task<int> SumAsync()
{
    return await Task.Run(() => { return OnePlusOne(); });
}

private static int OnePlusOne()
{  return 1+1;  }

And my main method:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    Pluck.Work(); 
}

I am missing something because I toggle a breakpoint within OnePlusOne and never gets hit.

Answer 1

Task.WhenAll(tasks) is an async method and so returns a Task . You need to await that task to make sure you proceed only after all the tasks completed. Currently your application may end before these tasks get a chance to run.

This results in marking Work with the async keyword and have it return a Task itself:

internal static async Task WorkAsync()
{
    Task[] tasks = new Task[5];
    for (int i = 0; i < tasks.Length; i++)
    {
        tasks[i] = SumAsync();
    }
    await Task.WhenAll(tasks);
}

Since you can't use await in Main you need to synchronously wait with Wait :

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    Pluck.WorkAsync().Wait(); 
}

In cases where a single await is the last things you do in a method (as in your SumAsync and my WorkAsync ) you can remove it and the async keyword and simply return the task instead. This slightly improves performance. More about it here .

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Note: You should only block on a task with Wait in very specific cases (like inside Main ) since it can lead to deadlocks. A better solution would be to use an AsyncContext .