I use a StringReader to turn a string into something I can upload to an SFTP server (it takes a stream). Is there any point in closing that StringReader>
If you know you're dealing with a StringReader that you'll be throwing away, I don't see any reason to close it. I can't imagine any reason you'd be holding a reference to it after you'd close it, so there's no real benefit to the string being set to null for garbage collection. If you were creating a method that takes a Reader then it might make sense to close it since you don't know the underlying type.