Dealing with .NET IDisposable objects

Question

I work in C#, and I\'ve been pretty lax about using using blocks to declare objects that implement IDisposable, which you\'re apparently always suppose

Answer 1

I'm not getting the point of your question. Thanks to the garbage collector, memory leaks are close to impossible to occur. However, you need some robust logic.

I use to create IDisposable classes like this:

public MyClass: IDisposable
{

    private bool _disposed = false;

    //Destructor
    ~MyClass()
    { Dispose(false); }

    public void Dispose()
    { Dispose(true); }

    private void Dispose(bool disposing)
    {
        if (_disposed) return;
        GC.SuppressFinalize(this);

        /* actions to always perform */

        if (disposing) { /* actions to be performed when Dispose() is called */ }

        _disposed=true;
}

Now, even if you miss to use using statement, the object will be eventually garbage-collected and proper destruction logic is executed. You may stop threads, end connections, save data, whatever you need (in this example, I unsubscribe from a remote service and perform a remote delete call if needed)

[Edit] obviously, calling Dispose as soon as possible helps application performance, and is a good practice. But, thanks to my example, if you forget to call Dispose it will be eventually called and the object is cleaned up.