Dispose pattern: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 05:53, 19 October 2022

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{{short description|Software design pattern in which resources held by objects can be explicitly released}}

{{redirect|Dispose|the album by The Plot In You|Dispose (album)|other uses|Disposal (disambiguation)}}

{{Refimprove|date=February 2013}}

In [[object-oriented programming]], the '''dispose pattern''' is a [[design pattern (computer science)|design pattern]] for [[resource management (computing)|resource management]]. In this pattern, a [[system resource|resource]] is held by an [[object (computing)|object]], and released by calling a conventional [[method (computer science)|method]] – usually called <code>close</code>, <code>dispose</code>, <code>free</code>, <code>release</code> depending on the language – which releases any resources the object is holding onto. Many languages[[programming language]]s offer [[language constructsconstruct]]s to avoid having to call the dispose method explicitly in common situations.

The dispose pattern is primarily used in languages whose [[runtime environment]] have [[automatic garbage collection]] (see motivation below).