Uniquely Identifying Multiple/Concurrent Async Tasks

[Frankie]

It appears that System.Random would provide an acceptable means through
which to generate a unique value used to identify multiple/concurrent
asynchronous tasks.

The usage of the value under consideration here is that it is supplied to
the AsyncOperationM anager.CreateOp eration(userSup pliedState) method... with
userSuppliedSta te being, more or less, a taskId.

In this case, the userSuppliedSta te {really taskId} is of the object type,
and could therefore be just about anything. Consequently it appears to me
that a unique integer as generated by System.Random would suffice (and yes,
I understand that System.Random doesn't provide *truly* random values).

Would you concur that System.Random would be "good enough" - or would you
recommend some better alternative for generating the taskId?

Thanks!

[Peter Duniho]

Frankie wrote:

<snip all>

Thanks for the helpful dialog on this. I learned a lot as this was my
initial encounter with the Event-based async pattern and the MSDN sample is
what I was basing everything off of. And thanks especially for posting some
very clear feedback and perspective on how you would modify the MSDN sample
in a way that frees the client from having to come up with some arbitrary
ID.

You're welcome. As you can see, it is often much easier to offer
comments when there is a concrete example of code to start with
(especially if that code sample is relatively minimal).

I didn't really like it to begin with, and especially their use of
Random... thus the OP here.

Indeed. I hope if nothing else it's clear that using Random isn't
appropriate for generating task IDs. Note, however, that the use of
Random in the sample code isn't for the task ID, but rather for the
number to test for prime-ness. The sample code uses a GUID as the task ID.

So, while there are obviously aspects of the sample I would do
differently, it's not actually broken. :)

Pete