Process.GetCurrentProcess.Kill vs. End

You ask for answers to the question for both ASP .Net and desktop applications. I am not as experienced with ASP .Net as other members are but as far as I know the solution for ASP .Net is very different.

The best solution for desktop applications is to close all windows (and threads if relevant) so that the message loop (all message loops if relevant, but it is nearly certain there is only one for your application) so that your application finishes normally. If you cannot do that then there is likely a problem with the design. If that problem exists, then you should analyze why. If you are not able to fix the design then you should at least understand the problem well enough so you do not repeat the problem in other applications.

You should read the relevant documentation. Killing a process is a very bad thing. As Vulpes says, do not do that unless abslutley necesary. Do not design an application to use Kill as a normal way to exit; not even for errors unless there is absolutely no other choice. You should not put a call to Kill in your applicaiton; let the user use it if needed but you should do everything you can to avoid the need for it.

As Vulpes said, the End statement uses Environment.Exit(). The problem with functions such as that is that they cause the message loop to exit immediately and the application does not have the opportunity to do cleanup that it would normally do. You can read the documentation of the End statement to understand it is also not good to use without the cleanup that is described in that documentation page.

If you must use one or the other, then I'd use End rather than Process.GetCurrentProcess().Kill().

End calls Environment.Exit() which calls the API function _exit() which is specifically designed to kill the current process dead.

Process.GetCurrentProcess().Kill() calls the API function TerminateProcess() which is designed to kill any process and so is less direct than _exit().

End should work with ASP.NET applications as well as desktop applications but will give you a browser error.

Dear Vulpes,
The scenario is here. I want to close my application if an error occurs.
So, what would be best choice between them in case of:
- Desktop Application
- Web Application

And Thanks for noticing. Its VB.NET's End Statement.
Thanks

Itz Irshad

You shouldn't 'kill' processes (particularly the current process) unless there's no other sensible alternative.

You should allow them to end gracefully where possible.

If you do need to end a Windows Forms application prematurely and you can't close the main form directly for some reason, then it's better to use Application.Exit, which does some cleaning up, rather than Process.GetCurrentProcess.Kill or its equivalent Environment.Exit(1) which cause an abrupt termination. The latter two can be used to force other types of application to end.

When you say 'End', I assume you must mean VB.NET's End statement:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/0wt87xba.aspx 

This also causes an abrupt termination and calls Environment.Exit(1) under the hood.