If a method is blocked while it is waiting for an event to be signaled, it cannot check the value of the cancellation token and respond in a timely manner. The following example uses a ManualResetEventSlim to demonstrate how to unblock coordination primitives that do support unified cancellation. The same approach can be used with other lightweight coordination primitives, such as SemaphoreSlim and CountdownEvent.
using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
class CancelNewStyleEvents
{
// New-style MRESlim that supports unified cancellation
// in its Wait methods.
static ManualResetEventSlim mres = new ManualResetEventSlim(false);
static void Main()
{
var cts = new CancellationTokenSource();
// Pass the same token source to the delegate and to the task instance.
Task.Run(() => DoWork(cts.Token), cts.Token);
Console.WriteLine("Press c to cancel, p to pause, or s to start/restart,");
Console.WriteLine("or any other key to exit.");
// New-style UI thread.
bool goAgain = true;
while (goAgain)
{
char ch = Console.ReadKey(true).KeyChar;
switch (ch)
{
case 'c':
// Token can only be canceled once.
cts.Cancel();
break;
case 'p':
mres.Reset();
break;
case 's':
mres.Set();
break;
default:
goAgain = false;
break;
}
Thread.Sleep(100);
}
cts.Dispose();
}
static void DoWork(CancellationToken token)
{
while (true)
{
if (token.IsCancellationRequested)
{
Console.WriteLine("Canceled while running.");
token.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();
}
// Wait on the event to be signaled
// or the token to be canceled,
// whichever comes first. The token
// will throw an exception if it is canceled
// while the thread is waiting on the event.
try
{
// mres is a ManualResetEventSlim
mres.Wait(token);
}
catch (OperationCanceledException)
{
// Throw immediately to be responsive. The
// alternative is to do one more item of work,
// and throw on next iteration, because
// IsCancellationRequested will be true.
Console.WriteLine("The wait operation was canceled.");
throw;
}
Console.Write("Working...");
// Simulating work.
Thread.SpinWait(500000);
}
}
}