When implementing this method, ensure that all held resources are freed by propagating the call through the containment hierarchy. For example, if an object A allocates an object B, and object B allocates an object C, then A's Dispose implementation must call Dispose on B, which must in turn call Dispose on C. An object must also call the Dispose method of its base class if the base class implements IDisposable.

If an object's Dispose method is called more than once, the object must ignore all calls after the first one. The object must not throw an exception if its Dispose method is called multiple times. Instance methods other than Dispose can throw an ObjectDisposedException when resources are already disposed.

Users might expect a resource type to use a particular convention to denote an allocated state versus a freed state. An example of this is stream classes, which are traditionally thought of as open or closed. The implementer of a class that has such a convention might choose to implement a public method with a customized name, such as Close, that calls the Dispose method.

Because the Dispose method must be called explicitly, objects that implement IDisposable must also implement a finalizer to handle freeing resources when Dispose is not called. By default, the garbage collector automatically calls an object's finalizer prior to reclaiming its memory. However, once the Dispose method has been called, it is typically unnecessary for the garbage collector to call the disposed object's finalizer. To prevent automatic finalization, Dispose implementations can call the GC.SuppressFinalize method.

For more information on implementing finalizers and the Dispose method, see the GC class, the Object.Finalize method, and Implementing Finalize and Dispose to Clean Up Unmanaged Resources.