Do I need to release the COM object on every 'foreach' iteration?

Question

Here\'s the (potential) problem:

I create a COM object, and then use a \'foreach\' to iterate through each element in a collection it returns. Do I need to release

Answer 1

You should not use a foreach statement with a COM object, as a reference is made behind the scenes to which you have no control over releasing. I would switch to a for loop and make sure you never use two dots with COM objects.

The way this would look would be:

try
{
    manager = new ComObjectClass();
    ComObject comObject = null;
    ComObject[] collectionOfComItems = manager.GetCollectionOfItems();
    try
    {
        for(int i = 0; i < collectionOfComItems.Count; i++)
        {
            comObject = collectionOfComItems[i];
            ReleaseComObject(comObject);
        }
    }            
    finally
    {
        ReleaseComObject(comObject);
    }
}
finally 
{
    ReleaseComObject(manager);
}