Should I use a using statement/dispose if the object isn't actually going to be used in code?

Question

I'm working in some Winforms code right now, and I have come across lines like this several times:

...
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(someFileName);
...

...which just kicks off some process on the client machine, and completely forgets about it. Process.Start(someFileName) returns a Process type object, which implements IDisposable, but the code is not doing anything with the object, because the whole idea was to just trigger the process and forget about it.

In this case, should the Process object still be disposed, if we're not keeping it in memory at all? Something like:

using (System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(someFileName) { }

or

var process = System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(someFileName);
process.Dispose();

If it implements IDisposable then dispose it, a using() {} is the canonical way to do this. — Alex K., Aug 14 '17 at 15:34
The short answer is: Yes you should dispose. And it doesn't matter which of the two variants of code you use (assuming you don't put code into the using-block) — Lasse V. Karlsen, Aug 14 '17 at 15:35

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 14 '17 at 15:35

Process objects holds unmanaged resource(s) (HProcess handle)

https://referencesource.microsoft.com/#System/services/monitoring/system/diagnosticts/Process.cs,f8b2e604d6f1fe04

public class Process : Component {
    //
    // FIELDS
    //

    bool haveProcessId;
    int processId;
    bool haveProcessHandle;
    SafeProcessHandle m_processHandle; // <- This should be disposed
    bool isRemoteMachine;
    string machineName;
    ProcessInfo processInfo;
    Int32 m_processAccess;
...

And thus should be disposed. Using local variable (var process = ...) looks overshooting in the context, that's why I suggest

System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(someFileName).Close();

Should I use a using statement/dispose if the object isn't actually going to be used in code?

1 Answers1