Do I need to manually dispose a TraceListener?

Question

Sorry if I miss it somewhere, but I cannot find any documentation if a TraceListener is automatically disposed by the framework.

If I use this code:

        var traceListener = new DailyTraceListener("Logs", true);
        Trace.Listeners.Add(traceListener);

Do I need to manually call traceListener.Dispose(), assuming Dispose should be called for it to work properly? Note that the implementation will throw error if Dispose is called the 2nd time (I am trying to change it).

In this article:

The listeners are disposed by the TraceSource

What/Where is the TraceSource in this case? Is it automatically disposed?

In short, is Dispose guaranteed to be called by .NET when the program exits?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 20 '18 at 16:33

I did the test by myself. Seem like it is never called naturally. This is the demo code:

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var listener = new TestTraceListener();
        Trace.Listeners.Add(listener);
        Trace.WriteLine("Test");
        listener.Dispose();
        Trace.WriteLine("After dispose");
    }
}

public class TestTraceListener : TraceListener
{
    public override void Write(string message)
    {
        File.AppendAllText("log.log", message);
    }

    public override void WriteLine(string message)
    {
        this.Write(message + Environment.NewLine);
    }

    protected override void Dispose(bool disposing)
    {
        this.WriteLine("Dispose called");
        base.Dispose(disposing);
    }

    ~TestTraceListener()
    {
        this.WriteLine("Destructor called");
    }

}

My text file is:

Test

Dispose called

After dispose

After that, I try removing the Dispose call (// listener.Dispose();), this is the result:

Test

After dispose

Conclusion: Dispose is not called by default if the program exit naturally.

Do I need to manually dispose a TraceListener?

1 Answers1