lock

using System;
using System.Threading;

class LockDemo
{
    private static int number = 0;
    private static object lockObject = new object();
    
    private static void DoSomething()
    {
        while (true)
        {
            lock (lockObject)
            {
                int originalNumber = number;
                
                number += 1;
                Thread.Sleep((new Random()).Next(1000)); // sleep for a random amount of time
                number += 1;
                Thread.Sleep((new Random()).Next(1000)); // sleep again
                
                Console.Write("Expecting number to be " + (originalNumber + 2).ToString());
                Console.WriteLine(", and it is: " + number.ToString());
                // without the lock statement, the above would produce unexpected results, 
                // since the other thread may have added 2 to the number while we were sleeping.
            }
        }
    }
    
    public static void Main()
    {
        Thread t = new Thread(new ThreadStart(DoSomething));
        
        t.Start();
        DoSomething(); // at this point, two instances of DoSomething are running at the same time.
    }
}

class LockDemo2
{
    private int number;
    private object obj = new object();
    
    public void DoSomething()
    {
        lock (this) // ok
        {
            ...
        }
        
        lock (number) // not ok, number is not a reference
        {
            ...
        }
        
        lock (obj) // ok, obj is a reference
        {
            ...
        }
    }
}