Destructors in C#

Destructors in C#

A destructor is a special member function of a class that is executed whenever an object of its class goes out of scope. A destructor will have exact same name as the class prefixed with a tilde (~) and it can neither return a value nor can it take any parameters.

Destructor can be very useful for releasing resources before coming out of the program like closing files, releasing memories etc. Destructors cannot be inherited or overloaded.

Following example explains the concept of destructor:

using System;

namespace LineApplication

{

   class Line

   {

      private double length;   // Length of a line

      public Line()  // constructor

      {

         Console.WriteLine("Object is being created");

      }

      ~Line() //destructor

      {

         Console.WriteLine("Object is being deleted");

      }

      public void setLength( double len )

      {

         length = len;

      }

      public double getLength()

      {

         return length;

      }

      static void Main(string[] args)

      {

         Line line = new Line();

         // set line length

         line.setLength(6.0);

         Console.WriteLine("Length of line : {0}", line.getLength());           

      }

   }

}