Question

Possible Duplicate:
Who should call Dispose on IDisposable objects when passed into another object?

Say you have a class with an interface like this:

public interface Foo
{
    Load(IDisposable something);
}

When implementing this method, should I call dispose when done? In other words, when a method of a class takes a Stream, Reader or anything else which is IDisposable, should this method dispose of the stream as well, or should this be left to whoever called the method?

I know either way would work, just curious what others more experienced would consider good conduct 🙂

Answer 1

You should not call Dispose in Load method, because you might do more with IDisposable object. using should use outside to dispose if you don’t need more. Sample code:

using (var something = new Something())
{
    IFoo foo = new Foo();
    foo.Load(something);

    // Do more with something
}