IDisposable metaphor in Java?

Question

As a java developer getting into .NET I\'d like to understand the IDisposable interface. Could somebody please try to explain this and how it differs from what happens in Java?

Answer 1

With java 1.7 there is the new introduced try-with-resource statement.

try (BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(path))) {
    return br.readLine();
}

The objects used here must implement AutoCloseable interface. It is not exactly the same as IDisposable, but the close() is called automatically in the finally. This gives the oportunity to implement similar behavior.

The code above is the same as

BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(path));
try {
    return br.readLine();
} finally {
    if (br != null) br.close();
}

Read more about this in java tutorial. The samplecode is coming from there.