Monitor.Wait timeout never times out

Question

So I have a simple test using Monitor.Wait with a timeout set for three seconds. It's my understanding that, when the time expires, a virtual pulse is sent to the monitor to release the wait. In my test, however, that never seems to happen. Can someone explain what's going on. Here's my test code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading;

namespace BlockingMethodFoo
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            WaitFoo foo = new WaitFoo();

            foo.StartMethod();

            Console.WriteLine("Done. Press enter");
            Console.ReadLine();

        }
    }

    public class WaitFoo
    {
        private object _waitObj = new object();
        private string _message = string.Empty;

        public void StartMethod()
        {
            Thread waitThread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(new Action(() => { WaitMethod(); })));

            _message = string.Empty;

            Console.WriteLine("Starting wait");

            _message = "Time Out";

            lock (_waitObj)
            {
                waitThread.Start();

                Monitor.Wait(_waitObj, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(3));
            }

            Console.WriteLine(_message);

        }

        private void WaitMethod()
        {

            lock (_waitObj)
            {
                _message = Console.ReadLine();
                Monitor.Pulse(_waitObj);
            }

        }
    }
}

Answer 1

Monitor.Wait will return false if the timeout expires and it couldn't get the lock.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/tdc87f8y.aspx

You have to check the return of Monitor.Wait and for example throw a TimeOutException if you see fit.