Pro C# 5.0 and the .NET 4.5 Framework, Sixth Edition

C H A P T E R  13

Understanding Object Lifetime

At this point in the text, you have learned a great deal about how to build custom class types using C#. Now you will see how the CLR manages allocated class instances (a.k.a. objects) via garbage collection. C# programmers never directly deallocate a managed object from memory (recall there is no delete keyword in the C# language). Rather, .NET objects are allocated to a region of memory termed the managed heap, where they will be automatically destroyed by the garbage collector “sometime in the future.”

After you have looked at the core details of the collection process, you’ll learn how to programmatically interact with the garbage collector using the System.GC class type (which is something ...