Why must I Close() a file in C#?

Question

I know this might seem silly, but why does the following code only work if I Close() the file? If I don\'t close the file, the entire stream is not written.

Steps:

Answer 1

Streams are objects that "manage" or "handle" non-garbage collected resources. They (Streams) therefore implement the IDisposable interface that, when used with 'using' will make sure the non-garbage collected resources are clean up. try this:

using ( StreamWriter outfile = new StreamWriter("../../file.txt") )
{
   outfile.Write(b64img);
}

Without the #Close, you can not be sure when the underlying file handle will be properly closed. Sometimes, this can be at app shutdown.