Understanding Dispose and Finalize in C#

In this post on Understanding Dispose and Finalize in C#, I will explain the two important methods related to the Garbage Collection. Basically, the garbage collection module of Common Language Runtime (CLR) in .NET Framework frees the programmer for memory management tasks. In fact, the garbage collector maintains three generations of objects – generation 0, generation 1, and generation 2. In order to read more about object generation and the GC class, read this post on How the .NET Framework Performs Garbage Collection

To begin with, Dispose and Finalize are methods in C# that we use for cleaning up resources when they are no longer needed.

In short, Dispose is a method that we call explicitly we want to release resources that the object is holding. To put it another way, we usually call this method when we don’t need that object or when it goes out of scope. In addition, the creator of the object implements the Dispose method. What’s more, we can call this method at any time to free up resources.

Meanwhile, Finalize is a method that is called automatically by the .NET runtime’s garbage collector when an object is no longer reachable. Therefore, the Finalize method provides a last chance for an object to clean up resources before it is destroyed. However, the use of Finalize is discouraged because it is difficult to control when it is called and the performance of the garbage collector can be affected.

In general, it is recommended to use Dispose instead of Finalize for resource cleanup in C#. The Dispose method provides a more reliable and predictable way to clean up resources.

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