[c#] Finalize vs Dispose

Why do some people use the Finalize method over the Dispose method?

In what situations would you use the Finalize method over the Dispose method and vice versa?

Finalize gets called by the GC when this object is no longer in use.

Dispose is just a normal method which the user of this class can call to release any resources.

If user forgot to call Dispose and if the class have Finalize implemented then GC will make sure it gets called.

There're some keys about from the book MCSD Certification Toolkit (exam 70-483) pag 193:

destructor ˜(it's almost equal to) base.Finalize(), The destructor is converted into an override version of the Finalize method that executes the destructor’s code and then calls the base class’s Finalize method. Then its totally non deterministic you can't able to know when will be called because depends on GC.

If a class contains no managed resources and no unmanaged resources, it shouldn't implement IDisposable or have a destructor.

If the class has only managed resources, it should implement IDisposable but it shouldn't have a destructor. (When the destructor executes, you can’t be sure managed objects still exist, so you can’t call their Dispose() methods anyway.)

If the class has only unmanaged resources, it needs to implement IDisposable and needs a destructor in case the program doesn’t call Dispose().

Dispose() method must be safe to run more than once. You can achieve that by using a variable to keep track of whether it has been run before.

Dispose() should free both managed and unmanaged resources.

The destructor should free only unmanaged resources. When the destructor executes, you can’t be sure managed objects still exist, so you can’t call their Dispose methods anyway. This is obtained by using the canonical protected void Dispose(bool disposing) pattern, where only managed resources are freed (disposed) when disposing == true.

After freeing resources, Dispose() should call GC.SuppressFinalize, so the object can skip the finalization queue.

An Example of a an implementation for a class with unmanaged and managed resources:

using System;

class DisposableClass : IDisposable
{
    // A name to keep track of the object.
    public string Name = "";

    // Free managed and unmanaged resources.
    public void Dispose()
    {
        FreeResources(true);

        // We don't need the destructor because
        // our resources are already freed.
        GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
    }

    // Destructor to clean up unmanaged resources
    // but not managed resources.
    ~DisposableClass()
    {
        FreeResources(false);
    }

    // Keep track if whether resources are already freed.
    private bool ResourcesAreFreed = false;

    // Free resources.
    private void FreeResources(bool freeManagedResources)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(Name + ": FreeResources");
        if (!ResourcesAreFreed)
        {
            // Dispose of managed resources if appropriate.
            if (freeManagedResources)
            {
                // Dispose of managed resources here.
                Console.WriteLine(Name + ": Dispose of managed resources");
            }

            // Dispose of unmanaged resources here.
            Console.WriteLine(Name + ": Dispose of unmanaged resources");

            // Remember that we have disposed of resources.
            ResourcesAreFreed = true;
        }
    }
}

Class instances often encapsulate control over resources that are not managed by the runtime, such as window handles (HWND), database connections, and so on. Therefore, you should provide both an explicit and an implicit way to free those resources. Provide implicit control by implementing the protected Finalize Method on an object (destructor syntax in C# and the Managed Extensions for C++). The garbage collector calls this method at some point after there are no longer any valid references to the object. In some cases, you might want to provide programmers using an object with the ability to explicitly release these external resources before the garbage collector frees the object. If an external resource is scarce or expensive, better performance can be achieved if the programmer explicitly releases resources when they are no longer being used. To provide explicit control, implement the Dispose method provided by the IDisposable Interface. The consumer of the object should call this method when it is done using the object. Dispose can be called even if other references to the object are alive.

Note that even when you provide explicit control by way of Dispose, you should provide implicit cleanup using the Finalize method. Finalize provides a backup to prevent resources from permanently leaking if the programmer fails to call Dispose.

Finalize is the backstop method, called by the garbage collector when it reclaims an object. Dispose is the "deterministic cleanup" method, called by applications to release valuable native resources (window handles, database connections, etc.) when they are no longer needed, rather than leaving them held indefinitely until the GC gets round to the object.

As the user of an object, you always use Dispose. Finalize is for the GC.

As the implementer of a class, if you hold managed resources that ought to be disposed, you implement Dispose. If you hold native resources, you implement both Dispose and Finalize, and both call a common method that releases the native resources. These idioms are typically combined through a private Dispose(bool disposing) method, which Dispose calls with true, and Finalize calls with false. This method always frees native resources, then checks the disposing parameter, and if it is true it disposes managed resources and calls GC.SuppressFinalize.

As we know dispose and finalize both are used to free unmanaged resources.. but the difference is finalize uses two cycle to free the resources , where as dispose uses one cycle..

Diff between Finalize and Dispose methods in C#.

GC calls the finalize method to reclaim the unmanaged resources(such as file operarion, windows api, network connection, database connection) but time is not fixed when GC would call it. It is called implicitly by GC it means we do not have low level control on it.

Dispose Method: We have low level control on it as we call it from the code. we can reclaim the unmanaged resources whenever we feel it is not usable.We can achieve this by implementing IDisposal pattern.

Finalize

• Finalizers should always be protected, not public or private so that the method cannot be called from the application's code directly and at the same time, it can make a call to the base.Finalize method
• Finalizers should release unmanaged resources only.
• The framework does not guarantee that a finalizer will execute at all on any given instance.
• Never allocate memory in finalizers or call virtual methods from finalizers.
• Avoid synchronization and raising unhandled exceptions in the finalizers.
• The execution order of finalizers is non-deterministic—in other words, you can't rely on another object still being available within your finalizer.
• Do not define finalizers on value types.
• Don't create empty destructors. In other words, you should never explicitly define a destructor unless your class needs to clean up unmanaged resources and if you do define one, it should do some work. If, later, you no longer need to clean up unmanaged resources in the destructor, remove it altogether.

Dispose

• Implement IDisposable on every type that has a finalizer
• Ensure that an object is made unusable after making a call to the Dispose method. In other words, avoid using an object after the Dispose method has been called on it.
• Call Dispose on all IDisposable types once you are done with them
• Allow Dispose to be called multiple times without raising errors.
• Suppress later calls to the finalizer from within the Dispose method using the GC.SuppressFinalize method
• Avoid creating disposable value types
• Avoid throwing exceptions from within Dispose methods

Dispose/Finalized Pattern

• Microsoft recommends that you implement both Dispose and Finalize when working with unmanaged resources. The Finalize implementation would run and the resources would still be released when the object is garbage collected even if a developer neglected to call the Dispose method explicitly.
• Cleanup the unmanaged resources in the Finalize method as well as Dispose method. Additionally call the Dispose method for any .NET objects that you have as components inside that class(having unmanaged resources as their member) from the Dispose method.

The best example which i know.

 public abstract class DisposableType: IDisposable
  {
    bool disposed = false;

    ~DisposableType()
    {
      if (!disposed) 
      {
        disposed = true;
        Dispose(false);
      }
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
      if (!disposed) 
      {
        disposed = true;
        Dispose(true);
        GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
      }
    }

    public void Close()
    {
      Dispose();
    }

    protected virtual void Dispose(bool disposing)
    {
      if (disposing) 
      {
        // managed objects
      }
      // unmanaged objects and resources
    }
  }

The main difference between Dispose and Finalize is that:

Dispose is usually called by your code. The resources are freed instantly when you call it. People forget to call the method, so using() {} statement is invented. When your program finishes the execution of the code inside the {}, it will call Dispose method automatically.

Finalize is not called by your code. It is mean to be called by the Garbage Collector (GC). That means the resource might be freed anytime in future whenever GC decides to do so. When GC does its work, it will go through many Finalize methods. If you have heavy logic in this, it will make the process slow. It may cause performance issues for your program. So be careful about what you put in there.

I personally would write most of the destruction logic in Dispose. Hopefully, this clears up the confusion.

The summary is -

• You write a finalizer for your class if it has reference to unmanaged resources and you want to make sure that those unmanaged resources are released when an instance of that class is garbage collected automatically. Note that you can't call the Finalizer of an object explicitly - it's called automatically by the garbage collector as and when it deems necessary.
• On the other hand, you implement the IDisposable interface(and consequently define the Dispose() method as a result for your class) when your class has reference to unmanaged resources, but you don't want to wait for the garbage collector to kick in (which can be anytime - not in control of the programmer) and want to release those resources as soon as you are done. Thus, you can explicitly release unmanaged resources by calling an object's Dispose() method.

Also, another difference is - in the Dispose() implementation, you should release managed resources as well, whereas that should not be done in the Finalizer. This is because it's very likely that the managed resources referenced by the object have already been cleaned up before it's ready to be finalized.

For a class that uses unmanaged resources, the best practice is to define both - the Dispose() method and the Finalizer - to be used as a fallback in case a developer forgets to explicitly dispose off the object. Both can use a shared method to clean up managed and unmanaged resources :-

class ClassWithDisposeAndFinalize : IDisposable
{
    // Used to determine if Dispose() has already been called, so that the finalizer
    // knows if it needs to clean up unmanaged resources.
     private bool disposed = false;

     public void Dispose()
     {
       // Call our shared helper method.
       // Specifying "true" signifies that the object user triggered the cleanup.
          CleanUp(true);

       // Now suppress finalization to make sure that the Finalize method 
       // doesn't attempt to clean up unmanaged resources.
          GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
     }
     private void CleanUp(bool disposing)
     {
        // Be sure we have not already been disposed!
        if (!this.disposed)
        {
             // If disposing equals true i.e. if disposed explicitly, dispose all 
             // managed resources.
            if (disposing)
            {
             // Dispose managed resources.
            }
             // Clean up unmanaged resources here.
        }
        disposed = true;
      }

      // the below is called the destructor or Finalizer
     ~ClassWithDisposeAndFinalize()
     {
        // Call our shared helper method.
        // Specifying "false" signifies that the GC triggered the cleanup.
        CleanUp(false);
     }

99% of the time, you should not have to worry about either. :) But, if your objects hold references to non-managed resources (window handles, file handles, for example), you need to provide a way for your managed object to release those resources. Finalize gives implicit control over releasing resources. It is called by the garbage collector. Dispose is a way to give explicit control over a release of resources and can be called directly.

There is much much more to learn about the subject of Garbage Collection, but that's a start.

The finalizer is for implicit cleanup - you should use this whenever a class manages resources that absolutely must be cleaned up as otherwise you would leak handles / memory etc...

Correctly implementing a finalizer is notoriously difficult and should be avoided wherever possible - the SafeHandle class (avaialble in .Net v2.0 and above) now means that you very rarely (if ever) need to implement a finalizer any more.

The IDisposable interface is for explicit cleanup and is much more commonly used - you should use this to allow users to explicitly release or cleanup resources whenever they have finished using an object.

Note that if you have a finalizer then you should also implement the IDisposable interface to allow users to explicitly release those resources sooner than they would be if the object was garbage collected.

See DG Update: Dispose, Finalization, and Resource Management for what I consider to be the best and most complete set of recommendations on finalizers and IDisposable.

The finalizer method is called when your object is garbage collected and you have no guarantee when this will happen (you can force it, but it will hurt performance).

The Dispose method on the other hand is meant to be called by the code that created your class so that you can clean up and release any resources you have acquired (unmanaged data, database connections, file handles, etc) the moment the code is done with your object.

The standard practice is to implement IDisposable and Dispose so that you can use your object in a using statment. Such as using(var foo = new MyObject()) { }. And in your finalizer, you call Dispose, just in case the calling code forgot to dispose of you.

To answer on the first part you should provide examples where people use different approach for the exact same class-object. Otherwise it is difficult (or even strange) to answer.

As for the second question better read first this Proper use of the IDisposable interface which claims that

It's your choice! But choose Dispose.

In other words: The GC only knows about finalizer (if any. Also known as destructor to Microsoft). A good code will attempt to cleanup from both (finalizer and Dispose).