Task

See below for a simple example of how to use a Task to do some time intensive stuff in a background process.

All you need to do is wrap your time intensive method in a Task.Run() call.

public void ProcessDataAsync()
{
    // Start the time intensive method
    Task<int> t = Task.Run(() => TimeintensiveMethod(@"PATH_TO_SOME_FILE"));

    // Control returns here before TimeintensiveMethod returns
    Console.WriteLine("You can read this while TimeintensiveMethod is still running.");

    Console.WriteLine("Count: " + t.Result);
}

private int TimeintensiveMethod(object file)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Start TimeintensiveMethod.");

    // Do some time intensive calculations...
    using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(file.ToString()))
    {
        string s = reader.ReadToEnd();

        for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++)
            s.GetHashCode();
    }
    Console.WriteLine("End TimeintensiveMethod.");

    // return something as a "result"
    return new Random().Next(100);
}

Found a mistake? Have a question or improvement idea? Let me know.

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