c# async task with no await statement

Question

I'm just starting with c# development, and i always strugled with asyncronous programming,Ii have a doubt about performing a task asyncrounously.

I have my own service capable of sending an email (not going into details but its working) and I want that the execution of that method runs asyncronously, I've been reading in msdn documentation about async and await.

I do want to send it asyncronously but i dont care about the result, I mean I dont want to specify an await statement. I was about to try it whithout it when I read from documentation

If an async method doesn’t use an await operator to mark a suspension point, the method executes as a synchronous method does, despite the async modifier.

So mi doubt would be, is that so? is there a way to achieve what I am looking for or it is a bad pactice/idea thinking in doing something like that. I hope i made my self clear. Thanks

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1018610/simplest-way-to-do-a-fire-and-forget-method-in-c/1018630#1018630 — , Jun 24 '15 at 16:28

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 25 '15 at 14:17

Regarding what you read in the docs, think about this this way:

public async Task OuterMethod()
{
    InnerMethod();
}

You've marked OuterMethod async, yet you're not doing any awaiting. The docs are simply saying that OuterMethod will run synchronously, and you may as well just mark it with void instead of async Task. However, the fact that OuterMethod runs synchronously doesn't change the nature of InnerMethod; it may well be asynchronous, and if you're not awaiting it, it will run fire-and-forget style, most likely on a background thread.

In your specific case, InnerMethod would be the method that sends the email. If you're certain you don't care whether sending the email succeeds or fails, I'd suggest calling SmtpClient.SendAsync without awaiting.

c# async task with no await statement

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