See below for a simple example of how to use async/await to do some time intensive stuff in a background process while maintaining the option of doing some other stuff that do not need to wait on the time intensive stuff to complete.
However, if you need to work with the result of the time intensive method later, you can do this by awaiting the execution.
public async Task ProcessDataAsync()
{
// Start the time intensive method
Task<int> task = TimeintensiveMethod(@"PATH_TO_SOME_FILE");
// Control returns here before TimeintensiveMethod returns
Console.WriteLine("You can read this while TimeintensiveMethod is still running.");
// Wait for TimeintensiveMethod to complete and get its result
int x = await task;
Console.WriteLine("Count: " + x);
}
private async Task<int> TimeintensiveMethod(object file)
{
Console.WriteLine("Start TimeintensiveMethod.");
// Do some time intensive calculations...
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(file.ToString()))
{
string s = await reader.ReadToEndAsync();
for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++)
s.GetHashCode();
}
Console.WriteLine("End TimeintensiveMethod.");
// return something as a "result"
return new Random().Next(100);
}