Question

I’ve run into something odd in a .NET CF 2.0 project for Pocket PC 2003 (Visual Studio 2005). I was dealing with a System.IO.Stream object and found that the IDE wouldn’t auto-complete the Dispose() method. I typed it in manually and received:

‘System.IO.Stream.Dispose(bool)’ is inaccessible due to its protection level

The error is referring to the protected Dispose(bool) method. Dispose() is either private or not present.

Question 1: How is this possible? Stream implements IDisposable:

public abstract class Stream : MarshalByRefObject, IDisposable

… and IDisposable requires a Dispose() method:

public interface IDisposable
{
    void Dispose();
}

I know the compiler won’t let me get away with that in my code.

Question 2: Will I cause problems by working around and disposing my streams directly?

IDisposable idisp = someStream;
idisp.Dispose();

The implicit cast is accepted by the compiler.

Edit: This was already answered in question 939124. The Stream class implements IDisposable explicitly. That’s a language feature I completely forgot about.

Answer 1

Stream implements the IDisposable interface, but hides the ‘official’ name Dispose and exposes the method Close that calls it internally. So calling Stream.Close() equals calling IDisposable.Dispose().

And q2:
No that won’t cause a problem but it isn’t necesary.