Memory Leak in C#

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Event Handlers are a very common source of non-obvious memory leaks. If you subscribe to an event on object1 from object2, then do object2.Dispose() and pretend it doesn’t exist (and drop out all references from your code), there is an implicit reference in object1’s event that will prevent object2 from being garbage collected.

MyType object2 = new MyType();

// ...
object1.SomeEvent += object2.myEventHandler;
// ...

// Should call this
// object1.SomeEvent -= object2.myEventHandler;

object2.Dispose();

This is a common case of a leak – forgetting to easily unsubscribe from events. Of course, if object1 gets collected, object2 will get collected as well, but not until then.

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  3. Understanding garbage collection in .NET
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  19. MemoryStream.Close() or MemoryStream.Dispose()
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