How to avoid Memory Leaks? [closed]

Question

What are some tips I can use to avoid memory leaks in my applications? Are there any gotchas or pitfalls that I can look out for?

Answer 1

Call Dispose on IDisposable objects or use the using clause. That should take care of most of the leaks I can think of.

Answer 2

Watch that you remove any event handlers that you use. In .NET, they are the most common cause of leaked memory.

Answer 3

As mentioned by ocdecio be sure to call Dispose on Idisposable objects, and remember to remove event handlers when you're done with an object. When building classes that works with unmanaged resources, be sure to implement Idisposable, so the user will know that there are critical resources that'll need to be disposed of.

Also, even though garbage collections do quite a bit a work for you, you should get rid of references to objects that you're done with. Else they'll still have a root, and they won't be GC'ed.