How to: Cancel a Parallel.For or ForEach Loop
The Parallel.For and Parallel.ForEach methods support cancellation through the use of cancellation tokens. For more information about cancellation in general, see Cancellation. In a parallel loop, you supply the CancellationToken to the method in the ParallelOptions parameter and then enclose the parallel call in a try-catch block.
Example
The following example shows how to cancel a call to Parallel.ForEach. You can apply the same approach to a Parallel.For call.
' How to: Cancel a Parallel.For or ForEach Loop
Imports System.Threading
Imports System.Threading.Tasks
Module CancelParallelLoops
Sub Main()
Dim nums() As Integer = Enumerable.Range(0, 10000000).ToArray()
Dim cts As New CancellationTokenSource
' Use ParallelOptions instance to store the CancellationToken
Dim po As New ParallelOptions
po.CancellationToken = cts.Token
po.MaxDegreeOfParallelism = System.Environment.ProcessorCount
Console.WriteLine("Press any key to start. Press 'c' to cancel.")
Console.ReadKey()
' Run a task so that we can cancel from another thread.
Dim t As Task = Task.Factory.StartNew(Sub()
If Console.ReadKey().KeyChar = "c"c Then
cts.Cancel()
End If
Console.WriteLine(vbCrLf & "Press any key to exit.")
End Sub)
Try
' The error "Exception is unhandled by user code" will appear if "Just My Code"
' is enabled. This error is benign. You can press F5 to continue, or disable Just My Code.
Parallel.ForEach(nums, po, Sub(num)
Dim d As Double = Math.Sqrt(num)
Console.CursorLeft = 0
Console.Write("{0:##.##} on {1}", d, Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId)
po.CancellationToken.ThrowIfCancellationRequested()
End Sub)
Catch e As OperationCanceledException
Console.WriteLine(e.Message)
End Try
Console.ReadKey()
End Sub
End Module
namespace CancelParallelLoops
{
using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
class Program
{
static void Main()
{
int[] nums = Enumerable.Range(0, 10000000).ToArray();
CancellationTokenSource cts = new CancellationTokenSource();
// Use ParallelOptions instance to store the CancellationToken
ParallelOptions po = new ParallelOptions();
po.CancellationToken = cts.Token;
po.MaxDegreeOfParallelism = System.Environment.ProcessorCount;
Console.WriteLine("Press any key to start. Press 'c' to cancel.");
Console.ReadKey();
// Run a task so that we can cancel from another thread.
Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
{
if (Console.ReadKey().KeyChar == 'c')
cts.Cancel();
Console.WriteLine("press any key to exit");
});
try
{
Parallel.ForEach(nums, po, (num) =>
{
double d = Math.Sqrt(num);
Console.WriteLine("{0} on {1}", d, Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId);
po.CancellationToken.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();
});
}
catch (OperationCanceledException e)
{
Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
}
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
}
If the token that signals the cancellation is the same token that is specified in the ParallelOptions instance, then the parallel loop will throw a single OperationCanceledException on cancellation. If some other token causes cancellation, the loop will throw an AggregateException with an OperationCanceledException as an InnerException.
See Also
Concepts
Lambda Expressions in PLINQ and TPL