Best Practices When Using the Lock Statement

The Lock Statement Is Easy to Misuse

When synchronizing access to data in multithreaded C# applications, it is common to use the lock statement—in part due to its simple syntax. However, its simplicity and ubiquity have a downside: it is tempting to use the lock statement without really considering what it does and what its requirements are in order for it to have the intended effect. Without delving into the more complex forms of thread coordination mentioned in the previous guide in this series, even basic usage of the lock statement has some gotchas of which every C# developer will want to be aware. Let's take a look at some recommendations with respect to the lock statement. Knowing such best practices will give you greater confidence when taking advantage of this useful C# keyword.

Lock on a Reference Type, Not a Value Type

One mistake you might make at the beginning is to try to lock on a variable that refers to a value type rather than an object type. For example:

static int myLocker;

static void WriteToFile()
{
  lock (myLocker)
  {
    ...
  }
}

Fortunately, the C# compiler will bring this to your attention in the form of a compiler error, telling you that “‘int’ is not a reference type as required by the lock statement.” As you might recall though, the lock statement is syntactic sugar for a try/finally statement with Monitor.Enter and Monitor.Exit. You might therefore also expect the following to produce a compiler error:

static int myLocker;

static void WriteToFile()
{
  Monitor.Enter(myLocker);
  try
  {
    ...
  }
  finally
  {
    Monitor.Exit(myLocker);
  }
}

But no, the above compiles just fine. At runtime however, the call to Monitor.Exit throws a SynchronizationLockException. Why?

While lock is a special C# keyword that allows the compiler to perform additional checks for you, Monitor.Enter and Monitor.Exit are normal .NET methods that accept any variable of type object. The C# language allows for automatic "boxing" (i.e. wrapping) of value types (such as integers, booleans, or structs) into reference types of type object, which is what allows us to pass in value types into many .NET methods. Automatic boxing however creates a new object each time boxing is necessary, so the object is different for each invocation of the Monitor methods. So, when Monitor.Exit attempts to find the lock for the box object containing myLocker, it finds none.

If the previous paragraph didn’t make sense to you, don’t worry. All of the problems in question can be avoided by always locking on a reference type and not a value type. Reference types are basically anything that is not a value type; examples include classes and delegates. To keep things even simpler, you can simply instantiate an object with object myLocker = new object();. In fact, it is common practice to do so, as we'll see in the next section.

Avoid Locking on Anything Publicly Accessible

The object that you choose to use with the lock statement doesn't have much to do, so it can be tempting to lock on some pre-existing object you have available to you. For example, let's say that you are writing a multithreaded web crawler console application and your application has a singleton buffer of some sort that represents a buffer of the data you are going to write to a file.

public class CustomBuffer { ... }

public static class Singletons
{
  public static CustomBuffer LinksBuffer { get; private set; } = ...
}

When you write the buffer to a file, you need to synchronize access to the file; so, you decide to use lock. It might be tempting in this context to lock on the singleton buffer object, e.g.:

static void WriteLinksBufferToFile()
{
  lock (Singletons.LinksBuffer)
  {
    ...
  }
}

Now, this might work initially and it has the advantage that you don’t have to create a separate variable just for the lock. But let's say another developer comes along later who is working on a completely different aspect of the application. This developer is perhaps less conscientious than you are, so when they need to lock, they use the first thing they find. Say they also choose to lock on the same LinksBuffer singleton, even though what they're synchronizing has nothing to do with links. Can you see why that would cause a potential problem?

As a result of the second developer’s decision to lock on the same object, we now have unrelated code waiting on each other. An inefficiency (and perhaps a bug that is difficult to troubleshoot) has been inadvertently introduced. Such a problem could be easily avoided if each developer created their own object for locking.

Let’s consider another example that is even more insidious. Let’s say that you get rid of the Singletons class altogether and instantiate a CustomBuffer in your web crawler code that is writing links to a file. You declare the CustomBuffer as private, so you believe it is safe to lock on your instance of CustomBuffer because no other code will have access to it. Let's also suppose that the CustomBuffer class now lives in a separate assembly and you don't have access to the source code. And, unbeknownst to you, somewhere inside CustomBuffer is the following bit of code:

lock (this)
{
  ...
}

We now inadvertently have the exact same problem as before: unrelated areas of the application are using the same object for locking! That’s because the this instance is publicly accessible, at minimum to the declarer (your web crawler code in this case). For that reason, you should avoid locking on this, despite its almost irresistible convenience. Furthermore, avoid locking on any object that does literally anything other than locking. Doing so is the only way to guarantee that problems such as the above are not introduced. With good reason, locking on a dedicated, private variable of type object called myLocker or something along those lines is considered to be a best practice. The object's usage is then unambiguous and you and other developers are unlikely to accidentally misuse it in the future. Keep it simple! The following approach is highly recommended and commonly used. Use such a variable only for locking.

private static object myLocker = new object();

Check State at the Beginning of the Lock Block

While working on multithreaded code, it can be easy, as a developer, to forget that when something happens is not always under our control. So, when using the lock statement, remember that we do not know how long a particular thread will sit at the lock statement before entering the block of code. If thread B has a lock when thread A encounters the lock statement, it could be seconds or even minutes before thread B releases the lock and allows thread A to acquire the same.

For that reason, it is often the case that developers need to check the state of the application after entering the lock statement's block. In fact, you may need to re-evaluate something that you just evaluated immediately before the lock statement. For example, consider the case where you have some amount of initialization code that needs to happen only once by whatever thread gets there first. The following approach would be incomplete:

static bool isInitialized;
static object initLock = new object();

static void InitializeIfNeeded()
{
  if (!isInitialized)
  {
    lock (initLock)
    {
      // init code here
      
      isInitialized = true;
    }
  }
}

While partially correct, the above approach may allow multiple initializations, especially if initialization is lengthy. Initialization could be actively in progress by one thread when the second thread encounters the lock. The correct approach would be something like the following:

static bool isInitialized;
static object initLock = new object();

static void InitializeIfNeeded()
{
  if (!isInitialized)
  {
    lock (initLock)
    {
      if (!isInitialized)
      {
        // init code here
      
        isInitialized = true;
      }  
    }
  }
}

The second check of isInitialized appears duplicative, almost as if it were a typo. But it is absolutely necessary since a thread has no idea what happened between the time the lock statement was encountered and the time the lock is eventually acquired. The first outer check of isInitialized is, therefore, an optimization; the authoritative check happens inside the lock. So again, always consider whether you need to check the state of your application after you enter the lock statement's block. Often, the answer is yes.

Avoid Excessive Locking

The final pitfall to be aware of when using the lock statement is simply using it when you don’t need to! Locking in itself is not very expensive from a "number of CPU cycles" perspective but, when you consider that a thread waiting on a lock can't do anything while it is waiting, any unnecessary pauses will significantly affect the overall execution time of your application's work. Consider the following example:

static object myLocker = new object();
static ConcurrentDictionary<string, string> keyValueData = new ...

static void RemoveAllData()
{
  lock (myLocker)
  {
    keyValueData.Clear();
  }
}

In the above example, our lock is redundant because a ConcurrentDictionary has its own code to synchronize access to its data. In fact, any collection in the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace has mechanisms to ensure access to its data is synchronized. Such collections are considered to be what's called "thread-safe", so you can use them in multithreaded contexts without worrying about race conditions. Any additional locking on your part when accessing thread-safe classes is, therefore, unnecessary. When you use .NET Framework classes for the first time, it's a good idea to check the documentation for information about its thread safety (or lack thereof), to know if you need to synchronize access to objects of that type or not. Doing so will help your applications reach their maximum performance.

One Tool in Your Toolbox

The lock statement is an extremely useful tool for C# developers writing multithreaded applications. Any amount of asynchronous programming can be challenging, so it is nice to have the lock statement's simple syntax available to you. But even the simplest of tools is not without its caveats. By following the above best practices, you will avoid many common problems while having your applications run exactly as you intended.

When it comes to asynchronous programming, the lock statement is by no means the only tool available for C# developers. Check out our other C# guides related to async programming for information on some of the others!