.Net Finalizers

In .Net languages such as C#, VB.Net, C++/CLI, and Prism, you cannot explicitly destroy a managed object (the same is true in Java). Instead, the .Net Framework's garbage collector (GC) takes care of destroying all objects. The GC destroys the objects only when necessary. Some situations of necessity are when memory is exhausted or you explicitly call the System.GC.Collect() method. In general, you never need to call System.GC.Collect().

In .Net, a finalizer is used to free non-managed objects such as a file or network resource. Because you don't know when the garbage collector will call your finalizer, Microsoft recommends you implement the IDisposable interface for non-managed resources and call it's Dispose() method at the appropriate time.

Q. If I implement IDisposable, can I also let the garbage collector free my objects?

A. It depends on how you implemented IDisposable and how you are using resources. In general, if you implement IDisposable you should take ownership of calling Dispose for each object instance you create. However, in the simple Working IDisposable Example in this article, you can either call Dispose to free the objects or let the garbage collector free them as demonstrated by the button click events.

Q. If I consume an object that implements IDisposable, should I always call Dispose?

A. In general, yes if it's a shared resource. However, again it depends on why IDisposable was implemented. If Dispose is freeing a resource that may be needed, like a file handle, then yes. There may be exceptions to this rule, but if an object implements IDisposable and the resource is a shared resource, then yes when you create an object instance, you should take ownership and also call Dispose at the appropriate time.

Syntax Simularities

C++, C++/CLI, and C# all use a method named ~ClassName. Java, VB.Net, and Prism use a method named Finalize(), lowercase finalize() for Java. In some other languages free() and destroy() or common.