Best way to dispose a list

c# asp.net list garbage-collection dispose
Vivekh picture Vivekh · Jul 6, 2011 · Viewed 82.3k times · Source

I am having List object. How can I dispose of the list?

For example,

List<User> usersCollection =new List<User>();

User user1 = new User();
User user2 = new User()

userCollection.Add(user1);
userCollection.Add(user2);

If I set userCollection = null; what will happen?

foreach(User user in userCollection)
{
    user = null;
}

Which one is best?

Answer

Cornelius picture Cornelius · Jul 6, 2011

Best idea is to leave it to the garbage collector. Your foreach will do nothing since only the reference will be set to null not the element in the list. Setting the list to null could in fact cause garbage collection to occur later than it could have (see this post C#: should object variables be assigned to null?).

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