Question

What are unmanaged objects? Can you please explain it in terms of the CLR? I learned on the internet that they say unmanaged objects don’t run under the CLR environment. Can you please give me an example of unmanaged objects?

Answer 1

Any memory not managed by the CLR memory management (i.e. garbage collector) is unmanaged memory.

An OS file handle is one example of unmanaged memory (under .NET and windows).

To properly dispose of unmanaged
resources, it is recommended that you
implement a public Dispose or Close
method that executes the necessary
cleanup code for the object. The
IDisposable interface provides the
Dispose method for resource classes
that implement the interface. Because
it is public, users of your
application can call the Dispose
method directly to free memory used by
unmanaged resources. When you properly
implement a Dispose method, the
Finalize method becomes a safeguard to
clean up resources in the event that
the Dispose method is not called.

Ref: Cleaning Up Unmanaged Resources