c# - SemaphoreSlim.WaitAsync before/after try block

Question

I know that in the sync world the first snippet is right, but what's about WaitAsync and async/await magic? Please give me some .net internals.

await _semaphore.WaitAsync();
try
{
    // todo
}
finally
{
    _semaphore.Release();
}

or

try
{
    await _semaphore.WaitAsync();
    // todo
}
finally
{
    _semaphore.Release();
}

Answer 1

According to MSDN, SemaphoreSlim.WaitAsync may throw:

1. ObjectDisposedException - If the semaphore has been disposed

2. ArgumentOutOfRangeException - if you choose the overload which accepts an int and it is a negative number (excluding -1)

In both cases, the SemaphoreSlim wont acquire the lock, which makes it unnessacery to release it in a finally block.

One thing to note is if the object is disposed or null in the second example, the finally block will execute and either trigger another exception or call Release which might have not acquired any locks to release in the first place.

To conclude, I would go with the former for consistency with non-async locks and avoiding exceptions in the finally block