Thread.Sleep vs Task.Delay?

Royi Namir picture Royi Namir · Jun 23, 2013 · Viewed 19.7k times · Source

I know that Thread.Sleep blocks a thread.

But does Task.Delay also block? Or is it just like Timer which uses one thread for all callbacks (when not overlapping)?

(this question doesn't cover the differences)

Answer

Kevin Gosse picture Kevin Gosse · Jun 23, 2013

The documentation on MSDN is disappointing, but decompiling Task.Delay using Reflector gives more information:

public static Task Delay(int millisecondsDelay, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
    if (millisecondsDelay < -1)
    {
        throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("millisecondsDelay", Environment.GetResourceString("Task_Delay_InvalidMillisecondsDelay"));
    }
    if (cancellationToken.IsCancellationRequested)
    {
        return FromCancellation(cancellationToken);
    }
    if (millisecondsDelay == 0)
    {
        return CompletedTask;
    }
    DelayPromise state = new DelayPromise(cancellationToken);
    if (cancellationToken.CanBeCanceled)
    {
        state.Registration = cancellationToken.InternalRegisterWithoutEC(delegate (object state) {
            ((DelayPromise) state).Complete();
        }, state);
    }
    if (millisecondsDelay != -1)
    {
        state.Timer = new Timer(delegate (object state) {
            ((DelayPromise) state).Complete();
        }, state, millisecondsDelay, -1);
        state.Timer.KeepRootedWhileScheduled();
    }
    return state;
}

Basically, this method is just a timer wrapped inside of a task. So yes, you can say it's just like timer.