Thread-safe Singleton
To fix the problem, you have to synchronize threads during the first creation of the Singleton object.
Program.cs: Conceptual example
using System;
using System.Threading;
namespace Singleton
{
// This Singleton implementation is called "double check lock". It is safe
// in multithreaded environment and provides lazy initialization for the
// Singleton object.
class Singleton
{
private Singleton() { }
private static Singleton _instance;
// We now have a lock object that will be used to synchronize threads
// during first access to the Singleton.
private static readonly object _lock = new object();
public static Singleton GetInstance(string value)
{
// This conditional is needed to prevent threads stumbling over the
// lock once the instance is ready.
if (_instance == null)
{
// Now, imagine that the program has just been launched. Since
// there's no Singleton instance yet, multiple threads can
// simultaneously pass the previous conditional and reach this
// point almost at the same time. The first of them will acquire
// lock and will proceed further, while the rest will wait here.
lock (_lock)
{
// The first thread to acquire the lock, reaches this
// conditional, goes inside and creates the Singleton
// instance. Once it leaves the lock block, a thread that
// might have been waiting for the lock release may then
// enter this section. But since the Singleton field is
// already initialized, the thread won't create a new
// object.
if (_instance == null)
{
_instance = new Singleton();
_instance.Value = value;
}
}
}
return _instance;
}
// We'll use this property to prove that our Singleton really works.
public string Value { get; set; }
}
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// The client code.
Console.WriteLine(
"{0}\n{1}\n\n{2}\n",
"If you see the same value, then singleton was reused (yay!)",
"If you see different values, then 2 singletons were created (booo!!)",
"RESULT:"
);
Thread process1 = new Thread(() =>
{
TestSingleton("FOO");
});
Thread process2 = new Thread(() =>
{
TestSingleton("BAR");
});
process1.Start();
process2.Start();
process1.Join();
process2.Join();
}
public static void TestSingleton(string value)
{
Singleton singleton = Singleton.GetInstance(value);
Console.WriteLine(singleton.Value);
}
}
}
Output.txt: Execution result
FOO
FOO
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