Is Dispose() in C# equivalent to free() in C

Question

Is .Dispose() in C# equivalent to free() in C?

Should I .Dispose() a OpenFileDialog after I have obtained the file name the user selected?

In my application, the user can select/open a file as often as he pleases, so would it not make more sense to leave the openFileDialog instance in memory and not dispose of it? Or would that be bad practise because of the specific architecture of the .NET framework?

Answer 1

You should dispose of anything that implements IDisposable. Typically, this means wrapping the context in a using statement, i.e.:

using (var myInstanceOfSomeClass = new SomeClassImplementingIDisposable())
{
    // do stuff
}

This is C# shorthand for a try/finally block that calls .Dispose().

As far as its relationship to free(), I don't think they are the same. My C is rusty, but .Dispose() is a more generic implementation that can clean up unmanaged resources such as file handles, database connections, memory allocations, etc. What exactly .Dispose() does for any given class is dependent on the implementation by the developer.