Dealing with .NET IDisposable objects

Question

I work in C#, and I\'ve been pretty lax about using using blocks to declare objects that implement IDisposable, which you\'re apparently always suppose

Answer 1

I use using blocks primarily for this scenario:

I'm consuming some external object (usually an IDisposable wrapped COM object in my case). The state of the object itself may cause it to throw an exception or how it affects my code may cause me to throw an exception, and perhaps in many different places. In general, I trust no code outside of my current method to behave itself.

For the sake of argument, lets say I have 11 exit points to my method, 10 of which are inside this using block and 1 after it (which can be typical in some library code I've written).

Since the object is automatically disposed of when exiting the using block, I don't need to have 10 different .Dispose() calls--it just happens. This results in cleaner code, since it is now less cluttered with dispose calls (~10 fewer lines of code in this case).

There is also less risk of introducing IDisposable leak bugs (which can be time consuming to find) by somebody altering the code after me if they forget to call dispose, because it isn't necessary with a using block.