closing and disposing

[keithv]

I came across the following code snippet in a project
I inherited. Having 2 close() and 2 dispose() calls for
essentially one stream seems to me to be way too much
overkill.

What is the proper idiom for this?

MemoryStream memStream = new MemoryStream();
BinaryWriter writer = new BinaryWriter(memStream);
// ...use writer
writer.Close();
byte[] data = memStream.ToArray();
memStream.Close();
((IDisposable)writer).Dispose();
((IDisposable)memStream).Dispose();
return data;


Thanks,
Keith

 

[Guest]

In fact all you need to do is close the file, and any one of the four calls
will do that.

The best way to do this, however is to use C#'s using construction...
using (MemoryStream memStream = new MemoryStream())
{
BinaryWriter writer = new BinaryWriter(memStream);
// ...use writer
byte[] data = memStream.ToArray();
return data;
}

The way you had it, if any of the code in
// ...use writer
threw an exception, the file would not get closed... if you use the "using"
construction, it puts all the enclosed into a try/finally block for you, and
then calls Dispose() in the finally block, regardless of whether or not any
exceptions were thrown.