Should Dispose() or Finalize() be used to delete temporary files?

Question

I have a class that makes use of temporary files (Path.GetTempFileName()) while it is active. I want to make sure these files do not remain on the user\'s hard driv

Answer 1

You should definitely use Dispose to clean up resources, but make sure you implement the IDisposable interface. You don't want to just add a method named Dispose.

Answer 2

A file is an unmanaged resource, and you implement IDisposable to clean up unmanaged resources that your classes are dependent upon.

I have implemented similar classes, although never in production code.

However, I understand your tentativeness about this - user interaction with the files outside of your application could screw things up and cause problems during disposal. However, that is the same for any file created/deleted by an application, regardless of whether or not it's tidied up by a Dispose() method or not.

I'd have to say that implementing IDisposable would be a reasonable choice.