We have been using the Dispose method for disposing objects in .NET. For the same purpose, we may also use the Finalize method. In this article I will try to explain what the Dispose and the Finalize methods are and where to use the Finalize and where to use the Dispose. I will also try to explain the difference between them.
Dispose
Garbage collector (GC) plays the main and important role in .NET for memory management so programmer can focus on the application functionality. Garbage collector is responsible for releasing the memory (objects) that is not being used by the application. But GC has limitation that, it can reclaim or release only memory which is used by managed resources. There are a couple of resources which GC is not able to release as it doesn't have information that, how to claim memory from those resources like File handlers, window handlers, network sockets, database connections etc. If your application these resources than it's programs responsibility to release unmanaged resources. For example, if we open a file in our program and not closed it after processing than that file will not be available for other operation or it is being used by other application than they can not open or modify that file. For this purpose FileStream class provides Dispose method. We must call this method after file processing finished. Otherwise it will through exception Access Denied or file is being used by other program.
Close Vs Dispose
Some objects expose Close and Dispose two methods. For Stream classes both serve the same purpose. Dispose method calls Close method inside.
void Dispose()
{
this.Close();
}
Here question comes, why do we need Dispose method in Stream. Having Dispose method will enable you to write below code and implicitly call dispose method and ultimately will call Close method.
using (FileStream file = new FileStream("path", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
{
//Do something with file
}
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