Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Then again, this is from the same book that explains how to write 
> destructors (i.e., "don't")

If C# is anything like Java in this regard, then destructors are pretty
much useless (because when you need destructors for something other than
freeing memory, which isn't necessary in C#, you usually need the
destructor to be called in a deterministic manner at a specific point in
the program, not at some undetermined time in the future maybe.)

In C++ destructors are useful for more than just freeing memory. For
example they are commonly used in things like locks: If a function needs
to use a lock, it can make a static lock instance which frees the lock
in its destructor, and it's guaranteed to be freed immediately when the
function is exited, regardless of how it's exited (ie. no matter where
the 'return' sentence is, or even if it's exited by throwing an
exception). It's handy because you don't need to any special code to
make sure that the destructor is called when the function is exited.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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