C#'s foreach ruined my afternoon

"Forest Fire" by CIFOR is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The other afternoon I ran into some nightmarish debugging with the following code:

private static void StartThreads()
{
    var values = new List<int>() { 1, 2, 3 };
    var threads = new List<Thread>();

    foreach (var value in values)
    {
        Thread t = new Thread(() => Run(value));
        threads.Add(t);
        t.Start();
    }

    // Wait for all threads to complete
    foreach (Thread t in threads)
        t.Join();
}

private static void Run(int value)
{
    Console.Write(value.ToString());
}

(I know, I know, I wish I could be using TPL but in this case I couldn't)

On my local machine, the code above ran and gave me my expected console output of 123 (your results may vary depending on what order the threads run in).

When I ran this code on my server however, the output was 333.

begin pulling out hair

Long story short, after a couple hours of investigation I figured out that the way a foreach loop works under the hood in C# ≥ 5.0, which is what I run on my local machine, works differently than a foreach loop in C# < 5.0, which is what I had on my server.

From the C# 4.0 spec, a foreach loop is really a while loop behind the scenes, meaning the code above really translates into something like this:

private static void StartThreads()
{
    var values = new List<int>() { 1, 2, 3 };
    var threads = new List<Thread>();
    IEnumerator<int> e = ((IEnumerable<int>)values).GetEnumerator();

    try
    {
        int v; // DECLARED OUTSIDE OF THE LOOP!!!
        while (e.MoveNext())
        {
            v = (int)(int)e.Current;
            Thread t = new Thread(() => Run(v));
            threads.Add(t);
            t.Start();
        }
    }
    finally
    {
        if (e != null) ((IDisposable)e).Dispose();
    }

    // Wait for all threads to complete
    foreach (Thread t in threads)
        t.Join();
}

The important thing to note in the above code is that int v gets declared outside of the while loop.

In the C# 5.0 spec, that int v gets declared inside the loop (causing it to get recreated with every iteration):

private static void StartThreads()
{
    var values = new List<int>() { 1, 2, 3 };
    var threads = new List<Thread>();
    IEnumerator<int> e = ((IEnumerable<int>)values).GetEnumerator();

    try
    {
        while (e.MoveNext())
        {
            int v; // C# 5.0 DECLARED INSIDE THE LOOP
            v = (int)(int)e.Current;
            Thread t = new Thread(() => Run(v));
            threads.Add(t);
            t.Start();
        }
    }
    finally
    {
        if (e != null) ((IDisposable)e).Dispose();
    }

    // Wait for all threads to complete
    foreach (Thread t in threads)
        t.Join();
}

Because my local machine and server were running different versions of .NET, the same exact code was producing totally different results.

Eventually I found Eric Lippert's article about the matter. Since I'm still fairly new to the world of .NET, I wasn't around for the big debate that took place in his comment's section regarding which should be the correct implementation. However, it is interesting to note that the C# devs decided to switch the logic on how the foreach loop operates so late in the game.

My eventual workaround for the .NET 3.5/C# 4.0 server was to assign the int to a newly created variable inside the foreach:

foreach (var value in values)
{
    var tempValue = value; // THE FIX
    Thread t = new Thread(() => Run(tempValue));
    threads.Add(t);
    t.Start();
}

As frustrating it may be to debug problems like this, it is nice to learn a little bit more of the language's history and idiosyncrasies.