Question

I’m trying to learn more about the Dispose method and how things happening in this might stall the Garbage collection of this object.

So, if I have:

DateTime _date = DateTime.UtcNow;

public void Dispose()
{
   bool append = true;
   using(var log = new System.IO.StreamWriter("log.txt", append))
   {
       log.WriteLine("Logged on: " + _date);
   }
}

Will the fact that I’m calling the _date in the Dispose method re-root the variable and not allow the GC to collect this?

This is leading on from my question here.

Answer 1

The garbage collector has nothing whatsoever to do with Dispose(), so the simple answer is: not at all. GC involves the finalizer (~YourType()), but not Dispose(), unless you mean the common Dispose(bool disposing) {...} pattern.

Secondly, a DateTime is a struct, and is thus not garbage collected.