Re: Finalizer vs. Dispose

From: Jochen Kalmbach (nospam-Jochen.Kalmbach_at_holzma.de)
Date: 03/17/05 

Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 06:08:50 -0800

Hi Klaus Aschenbrenner,

> When should we use a finalizer and when should we implement the
> IDisposable interface? I think when we have the IDisposable interface
> we don't need a finalizer - or are there any scenarios when a
> finalizer is better than implementing the IDisposable interface?

Finalizer and IDisposable are primarily two different things...

If a class implements a finalizer, it will (mostly) be called by the GC if
the object is not used anymore. The finalizer will also be called from
within a different thread...

IDisposable.Dispose is just a normal method!

In general you can say:
Implement IDisposable if you need to free unmanaged resources.

And additionally implement a finalizer if you want to free the unmanaged
resources if the user of your class forgot to call "Dispose".

Mostly all .NET classes which implements IDisposable, also implements an
finalizer. 

-- 
Greetings
  Jochen
 
   My blog about Win32 and .NET
   http://blog.kalmbachnet.de/

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