C# The 'new' keyword on existing objects

Question

I was wondering as to what happens to an object (in C#), once its reference becomes reassigned. Example:

Car c = new Car(\"Red Car\");
c = new Car(\"Blue Car         


        

Answer 1

In your example, the Red Car instance of c will become eligible for garbage collection when c is assigned to Blue Car. You don't need to do anything.

Check out this (old, but still relevant) MSDN article about the .NET garbage collector. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/bb985010.aspx

The first paragraph says it all:

Garbage collection in the Microsoft .NET common language runtime environment completely absolves the developer from tracking memory usage and knowing when to free memory.