Delete a file being used by another process

Question

I'm trying to programmically delete a file, but the file is apparently being used by another process (which happens to be my program). Basically, the program loads images from a folder by using FromUri to create a Bitmap, which is then loaded into an Image array, which in turn becomes the child of a stackpanel. Not very efficient, but it works.

I've tried clearing the stackpanel's children, and making the images in the array null, but I'm still getting the IOException telling me that the file is being used by another process.

Is there some other way to remove the file from my application's processes?

Answer 1

it may be Garbage Collection issue.

System.GC.Collect();  System.GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();  File.Delete(picturePath); 

Answer 2

In order to release an image file after loading, you have to create your images by setting the BitmapCacheOption.OnLoad flag. One way to do this would be this:

string filename = ... BitmapImage image = new BitmapImage(); image.BeginInit(); image.CacheOption = BitmapCacheOption.OnLoad; image.UriSource = new Uri(filename); image.EndInit(); 

Although setting BitmapCacheOption.OnLoad works on a BitmapImage that is loaded from a local file Uri, this is afaik nowhere documented. Therefore a probably better or safer way is to load the image from a FileStream, by setting the StreamSource property instead of UriSource:

string filename = ... BitmapImage image = new BitmapImage();  using (var stream = File.OpenRead(filename)) {     image.BeginInit();     image.CacheOption = BitmapCacheOption.OnLoad;     image.StreamSource = stream;     image.EndInit(); }