When do I need to use dispose() on graphics?

Question

I\'m learning to draw stuff in C# and I keep seeing recommendations to use dispose(), but I don\'t quite understand what it does.

• When should I be using dispos

Answer 1

When you ask for a graphical object, Windows will allocate a bit of memory for you. Calling dispose will tidy up that memory for you. If you do not call dispose, all of these handles to memory wil remain open and eventually your system will run out of resources, become slower and eventually stop (closing the program may free them however).

Because you're using .NET, when you have finished using your graphics object, the garbage collector will eventually call dispose for you. The problem with the garbage collector is you never know when it will clean up the object, so it may leave these resources open for longer than necessary.

This said, you should never have to call dispose yourself. Far better will be to put your object in using scope:

using(Graphics g)
{
    // do something with the resource
}

Now when you leave this using scope, the object will be destroyed and dispose will be called automatically for you. You should put all objects that have the dispose method defined inside a using scope.