ThreadStatic vs ThreadLocal<T>

Occasionally you might want to make the value of a static or instance field local to a thread (i.e. each thread holds an independent copy of the field), what you need in this case, is a thread-local storage.

In C#, there are mainly two ways to do this.

ThreadStatic

You can mark a field with the ThreadStatic attribute:

<br />
[ThreadStatic]<br />
public static int _x;<br />
…<br />
Enumerable.Range(1, 10).Select(i =&gt; new Thread(() =&gt; Console.WriteLine(_x++))).ToList()<br />
          .ForEach(t =&gt; t.Start()); // prints 0 ten times<br />

Whilst this is the easiest way to implement thread-local storage in C# it’s important to understand the limitations here:

• the ThreadStatic attribute doesn’t work with instance fields, it compiles and runs but does nothing..

<br />
[ThreadStatic]<br />
public int _x;<br />
…<br />
Enumerable.Range(1, 10).Select(i =&gt; new Thread(() =&gt; Console.WriteLine(_x++))).ToList()<br />
          .ForEach(t =&gt; t.Start()); // prints 0, 1, 2, … 9<br />

• field always start with the default value

<br />
[ThreadStatic]<br />
public static int _x = 1;<br />
…<br />
Enumerable.Range(1, 10).Select(i =&gt; new Thread(() =&gt; Console.WriteLine(_x++))).ToList()<br />
          .ForEach(t =&gt; t.Start()); // prints 0 ten times<br />

ThreadLocal<T>

C#  4 has introduced a new class specifically for the thread-local storage of data – the ThreadLocal<T> class:

<br />
private readonly ThreadLocal&lt;int&gt; _localX = new ThreadLocal&lt;int&gt;(() =&gt; 1);<br />
…<br />
Enumerable.Range(1, 10).Select(i =&gt; new Thread(() =&gt; Console.WriteLine(_localX++))).ToList()<br />
          .ForEach(t =&gt; t.Start()); // prints 1 ten times<br />

There are some bonuses to using the ThreadLocal<T> class:

• values are lazily evaluated, the factory function evaluates on the first call for each thread
• you have more control over the initialization of the field and is able to initialize the field with a non-default value

Summary

As you can see, using ThreadLocal<T> has some clear advantages over ThreadStatic, though using 4.0 only features like ThreadLocal<T> means you have to target your project at the .Net 4 framework and is therefore not backward compatible with previous versions of the framework.

It’s also worth noting that besides ThreadLocal<T> and ThreadStatic you can also use Thread.GetData and Thread.SetData to fetch and store thread specific data from and to a named LocalDataStoreSlot though this is usually cumbersome…