Get deterministic finalization in C#?

Deterministic finalization means that you can destroy an object and reclaim the heap memory it was using exactly when you want to. For example, this can be done in unmanaged C++ using the delete operator.

This is not possible in C# and .NET generally. All you can do is to set all references to a managed object to null and wait for the garbage collector to get around to destroying the object.

However, you can force a garbage collection of all such objects (or all such objects in a particular generation) by calling the GC.Collect method:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xe0c2357.aspx

If an object uses unmanaged resources, you can also reclaim those resources immediately by implementing the IDisposable interface and calling the Dispose method on the object (or use the 'using' statement which does this automatically) without waiting for the managed object itself to be destroyed.

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George Tourtsinakis11y ago
Good explanation for deterministic finalization in C# Vulpes.
Vulpes14y ago
Deterministic finalization means that you can destroy an object and reclaim the heap memory it was using exactly when you want to. For example, this can be done in unmanaged C++ using the delete operator.

This is not possible in C# and .NET generally. All you can do is to set all references to a managed object to null and wait for the garbage collector to get around to destroying the object.

However, you can force a garbage collection of all such objects (or all such objects in a particular generation) by calling the GC.Collect method:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xe0c2357.aspx

If an object uses unmanaged resources, you can also reclaim those resources immediately by implementing the IDisposable interface and calling the Dispose method on the object (or use the 'using' statement which does this automatically) without waiting for the managed object itself to be destroyed.