How to create a new Thread to execute an Action<T>

Question

The title pretty much says it. I have some methods that need to run on a new thread and since all the code before creating the thread is pretty much the same, I thought I would create a function that could take as a parameter the Action I need to invoke.

Problem is, I have not found how to tell the thread that it needs to execute the Action. Is that even possible? Here's a little sample code of what I'm trying to do.

private void ExecuteInBiggerStackThread(Action<Helper> action, Parameters parms)
{
    ParameterizedThreadStart operation = new ParameterizedThreadStart(action);// here's the mess
    Thread bigStackThread = new Thread(operation, 1024 * 1024);

    bigStackThread.Start(parms);
    bigStackThread.Join();
}

Regards,
seba

Answer 1

Try using Action<object> and then cast to Helper in the Action's body

Answer 2

Something like this ought to do the trick:

private void ExecuteInBiggerStackThread(Action<Helper> action, Helper h)
{
    var operation = new ParameterizedThreadStart(obj => action((Helper)obj));
    Thread bigStackThread = new Thread(operation, 1024 * 1024);

    bigStackThread.Start(h);
    bigStackThread.Join();
}

Answer 3

I wouldn't even bother with ParameterizedThreadStart. Let the compiler do the dirty work:

private void ExecuteInBiggerStackThread(Action<Helper> action, Helper h)
{
    Thread bigStackThread = new Thread(() => action(h), 1024 * 1024);

    bigStackThread.Start();
    bigStackThread.Join();
}

Of course, you could carry this a step further and change the signature to:

private void ExecuteInBiggerStackThread(Action action) { ... }