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Asked: 2026-06-17T13:06:05+00:00

I am trying to understand how events can cause a memory leak. I found

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I am trying to understand how events can cause a memory leak. I found a good explaination at this stackoverflow question but when looking at objects in Windg, I am getting confused with the result. To start with, I have a simple class as follows.

class Person
    {
        public string LastName { get; set; }
        public string FirstName { get; set; }

        public event EventHandler UponWakingUp;
        public Person()  {  }

        public void Wakeup()
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Waking up");
            if (UponWakingUp != null)
                UponWakingUp(null, EventArgs.Empty);
        }
    }

Now I am using this class in a windows form application as follows.

public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        Person John = new Person() { LastName = "Doe", FirstName = "John" };

        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();

            John.UponWakingUp += new EventHandler(John_UponWakingUp);
        }

        void John_UponWakingUp(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("John is waking up");
        }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            John = null;
            GC.Collect();
            GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();
            GC.Collect();
            MessageBox.Show("done");
         }
    }

As you can see, I instaniated Person class and subscribed to UponWakingUp event. I have a button on this form. When user click this button, I set this Person instance to null without un-subscribing to the event. Then I call GC.Collect to be sure that Garbade collection is been performed. I am showing a message box here so that I can attach Windbg to look references help by Form1 class and within this class I don’t see any reference to that event (Windbg output is shown below although Form1 has too long data, I am displaying related to my question). This class has a reference to Person class but it is null. Basically this does not seem like a memory leak to me as Form1 does not has any reference to Person class even thouh it did not unsubscribed to the event.

My question is if this does cause memory leak. If not, why not? 

0:005> !do 0158d334   
Name:        WindowsFormsApplication1.Form1  
MethodTable: 00366390  
EEClass:     00361718  
Size:        332(0x14c) bytes  
File:        c:\Sandbox\\WindowsFormsApplication1\WindowsFormsApplication1\bin\Debug\WindowsFormsApplication1.exe  
Fields:  
      MT    Field   Offset                 Type VT     Attr    Value Name  
619af744  40001e0        4        System.Object  0 instance 00000000 __identity  
60fc6c58  40002c3        8 ...ponentModel.ISite  0 instance 00000000 site  
619af744  4001534      b80        System.Object  0   static 0158dad0 EVENT_MAXIMIZEDBOUNDSCHANGED  
**00366b70  4000001      13c ...plication1.Person  0 instance 00000000 John**  
60fc6c10  4000002      140 ...tModel.IContainer  0 instance 00000000 components  
6039aadc  4000003      144 ...dows.Forms.Button  0 instance 015ad06c button1  

0:008> !DumpHeap -mt 00366b70    
 Address       MT     Size  
total 0 objects  
Statistics:  
      MT    Count    TotalSize Class Name  
Total 0 objects
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    This is a case of a circular reference. The form has a reference to the object that listens to the event through the John field. In turn, John has a reference to the form when its UponWakingUp event was subscribed by the form’s constructor.

    Circular references can be a problem in certain automatic memory management schemes, particularly so in reference counting. But the .NET garbage collector doesn’t have a problem with. As long as neither the form object nor the Person object have any additional references, the circular reference between the two cannot keep each other alive.

    There are no additional references to either in your code. Which would normally cause both objects to be garbage collected. But the Form class is special, as long as a native Windows window for it exists, an internal reference stored in a handle-to-object table maintained by Winforms keeps the form object alive. Which keeps John alive.

    So the normal way this is cleaned-up is that the user closes the window by clicking the X in the upper right corner. Which in turn causes the native window handle to be destroyed. Which removes the form reference from that internal table. The next garbage collection now sees nothing but the circular reference and collects them both.

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