Menu
Do you need to dispose of objects and set them to null, or will the garbage collector clean them up when they go out of scope?
829
You only need to Dispose the object - you do not need to set it to null , unless there is other code that checks for a null value and responds appropriately. Show activity on this post. Dispose is not better or worse than setting to null. They serve different purposes.
The dispose pattern is used for objects that implement the IDisposable interface, and is common when interacting with file and pipe handles, registry handles, wait handles, or pointers to blocks of unmanaged memory. This is because the garbage collector is unable to reclaim unmanaged objects.
In the context of C#, dispose is an object method invoked to execute code required for memory cleanup and release and reset unmanaged resources, such as file handles and database connections.
The Dispose Method—Explicit Resource Cleanup Unlike Finalize, developers should call Dispose explicitly to free unmanaged resources. In fact, you should call the Dispose method explicitly on any object that implements it to free any unmanaged resources for which the object may be holding references.
Objects will be cleaned up when they are no longer being used and when the garbage collector sees fit. Sometimes, you may need to set an object to null in order to make it go out of scope (such as a static field whose value you no longer need), but overall there is usually no need to set to null.
Regarding disposing objects, I agree with @Andre. If the object is IDisposable it is a good idea to dispose it when you no longer need it, especially if the object uses unmanaged resources. Not disposing unmanaged resources will lead to memory leaks.
You can use the using statement to automatically dispose an object once your program leaves the scope of the using statement.
using (MyIDisposableObject obj = new MyIDisposableObject()) { // use the object here } // the object is disposed here Which is functionally equivalent to:
MyIDisposableObject obj; try { obj = new MyIDisposableObject(); } finally { if (obj != null) { ((IDisposable)obj).Dispose(); } } If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
