Proper use of the IDisposable interface

Question

I know from reading the Microsoft documentation that the \"primary\" use of the IDisposable interface is to clean up unmanaged resources.

To me, \"unman

Answer 1

Yep, that code is completely redundant and unnecessary and it doesn't make the garbage collector do anything it wouldn't otherwise do (once an instance of MyCollection goes out of scope, that is.) Especially the .Clear() calls.

Answer to your edit: Sort of. If I do this:

public void WasteMemory()
{
    var instance = new MyCollection(); // this one has no Dispose() method
    instance.FillItWithAMillionStrings();
}

// 1 million strings are in memory, but marked for reclamation by the GC

It's functionally identical to this for purposes of memory management:

public void WasteMemory()
{
    var instance = new MyCollection(); // this one has your Dispose()
    instance.FillItWithAMillionStrings();
    instance.Dispose();
}

// 1 million strings are in memory, but marked for reclamation by the GC

If you really really really need to free the memory this very instant, call GC.Collect(). There's no reason to do this here, though. The memory will be freed when it's needed.