Do I need to explicitly close the StreamReader in C# when using it to load a file into a string variable?

Question

Example:

variable = new StreamReader( file ).ReadToEnd();

Is that acceptable?

Answer 1

You should always dispose of your resources.

// the using statement automatically disposes the streamreader because
// it implements the IDisposable interface
using( var reader = new StreamReader(file) )
{
    variable = reader.ReadToEnd();
}

Or at least calling it manually:

reader = new StreamReader(file);
variable = reader.ReadToEnd();
reader.Close();