Setting Objects to Null/Nothing after use in .NET

Question

Should you set all the objects to null (Nothing in VB.NET) once you have finished with them?

I understand that in .NET it is essential to

Answer 1

In general no need to set to null. But suppose you have a Reset functionality in your class.

Then you might do, because you do not want to call dispose twice, since some of the Dispose may not be implemented correctly and throw System.ObjectDisposed exception.

private void Reset()
{
    if(_dataset != null)
    {
       _dataset.Dispose();
       _dataset = null;
    }
    //..More such member variables like oracle connection etc. _oraConnection
 }

Answer 2

Some object suppose the .dispose() method which forces the resource to be removed from memory.

Answer 3

The only time you should set a variable to null is when the variable does not go out of scope and you no longer need the data associated with it. Otherwise there is no need.

Answer 4

Karl is absolutely correct, there is no need to set objects to null after use. If an object implements IDisposable, just make sure you call IDisposable.Dispose() when you're done with that object (wrapped in a try..finally, or, a using() block). But even if you don't remember to call Dispose(), the finaliser method on the object should be calling Dispose() for you.

I thought this was a good treatment:

Digging into IDisposable

and this

Understanding IDisposable

There isn't any point in trying to second guess the GC and its management strategies because it's self tuning and opaque. There was a good discussion about the inner workings with Jeffrey Richter on Dot Net Rocks here: Jeffrey Richter on the Windows Memory Model and Richters book CLR via C# chapter 20 has a great treatment:

Answer 5

No don't null objects. You can check out https://web.archive.org/web/20160325050833/http://codebetter.com/karlseguin/2008/04/28/foundations-of-programming-pt-7-back-to-basics-memory/ for more information, but setting things to null won't do anything, except dirty your code.

Answer 6

Chances are that your code is not structured tightly enough if you feel the need to null variables.

There are a number of ways to limit the scope of a variable:

As mentioned by Steve Tranby

using(SomeObject object = new SomeObject()) 
{
  // do stuff with the object
}
// the object will be disposed of

Similarly, you can simply use curly brackets:

{
    // Declare the variable and use it
    SomeObject object = new SomeObject()
}
// The variable is no longer available

I find that using curly brackets without any "heading" to really clean out the code and help make it more understandable.