All 18 Memory & Garbage Collection questions
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What is the difference between managed and unmanaged resources? What is the difference between the stack and the heap in .NET memory management? What are .NET's garbage collection 'generations,' and what's the core assumption behind this design? How does garbage collection in .NET work, and what three phases does a collection cycle go through? What is the difference between a finalizer and Dispose? How does the IDisposable pattern and the 'using' statement help manage UNMANAGED resources that the garbage collector doesn't automatically clean up? What is a memory leak in a garbage-collected language like C#, given that the GC handles cleanup automatically? What is boxing and unboxing, and why does it have a real performance cost? What is the difference between Dispose and Finalize in C#, and when should each actually be used? What causes managed memory leaks despite the GC?
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C# › Memory & Garbage Collection

What is the IDisposable pattern and why implement it?

Intermediate

Answer

It provides deterministic cleanup of unmanaged resources via Dispose(), usually with using. Implement it when a type owns unmanaged or disposable resources.
public void Dispose() { _conn.Dispose(); GC.SuppressFinalize(this); }
Real-world example A repository that owns a DbConnection implements IDisposable so callers can release it promptly.
All 18 Memory & Garbage Collection questions