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Don’t mix await and compound assignment

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The 5.0 release of C# introduced the await keyword which makes it extremely easy to use Task<T> in a non-blocking fashion.  This allows developers to replace either blocking calls to Task.Wait() or complicated combinations of ContinueWith and callbacks with a nice simple, straight forward expression

         Task<int> task = ...;
        int local = await task;
        Use(local);

What most people don’t consider is the implications of this non-blocking support.  At the point the ”await task” expression executes the program can do one of two things.  If task is resolved the await expression will complete and the method will continue executing immediately.  If it’s not then the method will pause and some other part of the program will wake up and start running.  This other code interleaves with with the execution of this method.  This means subtle timing changes in when Task values are resolved can drastically alter the order in which a program executes.

These method interleavings can be the source of many subtle bugs in the program.  They are typically timing related and hence often don’t predictably reproduce and possibly don’t show up at all until the program is executing on a customers machine.  One of the most common bugs I see is when developers mistakenly combine compound assignment with the await keyword

         x += await y;

The C# compiler will rewrite this code into roughly the following [1]

         x = x + await y;

And it executes in the following steps

  1. load x onto the stack
  2. await y
  3. Push result of “await y” onto the stack
  4. Add the stack values
  5. Store into x

In the case where “y” isn’t resolved the execution of this code will stop at step #2.  At which point some other code will begin executing in its place.  If “x” is a local there isn’t much danger here but what if “x” represents a field that is accessible to another part of the program?  And what if that field is modified while this expression is paused at #2?  When this statement resumes it will never re-read the value of “x” and hence any writes to it which occurred during the pause will be erased once the expression completes.  Or in other words, it will quite simply ignore the other write. 

I most frequently see this problem with accumulator scenarios.  A collection of tasks are spun up and the results are tallied up as they complete

     class Accumulator
    {
        private int m_sum;

        public int Sum
        {
            get { return m_sum; }
        }

        public async Task Add(Task<int> value)
        {
            m_sum += await value;
        }
    }

This code is fundamentally incorrect because it invites this very problem.  Consider the following scenario

  1. Call to Add is made with an unresolved Task.  Add pauses on the task having already read m_sum onto the stack
  2. Call to Add is made with a resolved Task with a value of 4.  Add completes and m_sum is now 4
  3. Task from step 1 resolves with a value of 2.  The value on the stack for m_sum is still 0 so m_sum is written out as 2 instead of 6

 

The way to avoid this problem is to simply not mix await and the compound operator.  Instead store the await value into a temp and then do the assignment without the risk of interleavings.

 

         public async Task Add(Task<int> value)
        {
            var temp = await value;
            m_sum += temp;
        }

 

Here is a sample which will demonstrate the bug in a deterministic fashion. 

         var accumulator = new Accumulator();
        var taskCompletionSource1 = new TaskCompletionSource<int>();
        var taskCompletionSource2 = new TaskCompletionSource<int>();

        var task1 = accumulator.Add(taskCompletionSource1.Task);
        var task2 = accumulator.Add(taskCompletionSource2.Task);
        taskCompletionSource2.SetResult(3);
        taskCompletionSource1.SetResult(2);

        await task1;
        await task2;

        Console.WriteLine(accumulator.Sum);

This code will print out 2 instead of the expected 5

[1] I use “roughly” here because it the compiler actually does a more complicated rewrite.  It ensures that the side effects of “x” happen exactly once during the execution of this method.  For locals though this is roughly the code that is generated and serves fine for this example

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 12, 2013
    Since you are referencing multi-threading bugs, isn't the example with a temporary value still unsafe? The first add could get preempted after it reads m_sum, and the second thread could run and update m_sum, and then the first thread would trample the second thread's update. So the correct code would need some kind of synchronization, like Interlocked.Add. The main point though is a good one, and problems like this are becoming much easier with await.

  • Anonymous
    February 12, 2013
    @Ian This is actually a bug which happens equally as well for single threaded and multi-threaded code.  The repro code I showed all executes on a single thread.  

  • Anonymous
    February 13, 2013
    Oh, right. That is what makes it even more interesting (and deadly) I suppose. Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    February 14, 2013
    >The first add could get preempted after it reads m_sum, and the second thread could run and update >m_sum, and then the first thread would trample the second thread's update. Adding of something to int32 bit variable (not property) should be atomic at x86

  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2013
    @Leonid the write of the int32 value is atomic but the read of the original value can occur on a separate turn from the write.  This is what makes it unsafe

  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2013
    @Jared, why? add m_sum, eax is atomic.

  • Anonymous
    February 18, 2013
    @Leonid it is indeed atomic but that's not the code that is executed here.  If you look at the IL it's essentially ldfield m_sum await y add stfield m_sum The "add" IL instruction operates on the 2 values which are pushed on the IL stack.  The m_sum value is pushed atomically but it is also cached on the stack.  While waiting for await y to finish, it's very possible that another operation will start running which modifies m_sum.  This will modify the field only and not the value which is cached on the stack.  Hence when it resumes it will add the previous value of m_sum to 'await y' and erase the intermediate m_sum value