Is Your C# Operation Atomic? A Guide to Ensuring Data Integrity

Understanding Atomicity in C#

In programming, atomicity refers to operations that are guaranteed to complete as a single, indivisible unit. In C#, determining whether an operation is atomic can be crucial for ensuring data integrity and concurrency in multithreaded environments.

Guidelines for Atomicity

While there is no systematic way to determine the atomicity of all operations in C#, there are several general guidelines to consider:

• 32-bit Value Types: Reads and writes to 32-bit value types (e.g., int, float) are atomic.
• Reference Assignment: Assigning a reference to a new object is atomic.
• Long Operations: Operations involving floating-point numbers, 64-bit values (long), or other complex types may not be atomic.
• Thread-Safe Collections: Using thread-safe collections, such as ConcurrentDictionary or ConcurrentQueue, ensures atomicity of operations.

Examples of Atomic Operations

To illustrate the above guidelines:

int x;
x = 10; // Atomic (32-bit value type)

String _text;
public void Method(String text)
{
  _text = text; // Atomic (reference assignment)
}

Non-Atomic Operations

In contrast, the following operations are not atomic and can lead to concurrency issues:

double d;
d = 10m; // Non-atomic (floating-point)

long l;
l = 10; // Non-atomic (64-bit value type)

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