It’s com­mon to run into the prob­lem of resources and tasks hang­ing around after they need to. It’s easy to for­get to close a data­base con­nec­tion, or can­cel a timer, or stop an HTTP request that isn’t need­ed any more. This can cause all sorts of sub­tle prob­lems from hang­ing to leaks and beyond.

Let’s look at dif­fer­ent ways to avoid this prob­lem, includ­ing the new “using” state­ment and the resource man­age­ment tools that come with it, along­side exist­ing APIs. We’ll explore pat­terns that make it eas­i­er to man­age resources in the face of unex­pect­ed excep­tions, and how to diag­nose which resources aren’t being closed properly.