Question about deleting an ATL object.

[Smiuv]

Hi,
I want to know about how to delete an ATL object.
How is an object actually deleted? I don't find a direct command like Dispose(); or Close();.
Because in most cases I get information from ATL and at that moment I want to delete the object. Anyway I dispose the stream manually but I don't know much about ATL.

[Zeugma440]

That's more like a general programming question than an ATL question.

First of all, I advice you handle your streams with the using keyword, so that they get marked for garbage collection as soon as you finish using them.

ATL itself doesn't keep any reference to file/stream data other than what's exposed through Track. What might happen if you keep a reference to all Tracks you read is their embedded pictures sitting on your RAM.

Let's say you scan 2000 files, each with a 600KB embedded JPEG cover, that's a potential 1.2GB footprint.

If you didn't access those pictures (=if you didn't call Track.EmbeddedPictures), those won't be loaded at all. But if you did, each Track you keep reference to will be as big as the sum of all its embedded pictures.

Individually, it isn't much of a problem, but it can be an issue if you keep 1000's of Tracks inside a Collection.

That's about all I can say right now without more input from you. What caused you to ask about memory clearing in the first place?

[Zeugma440]

PS : Don't forget Visual Studio can help you take snapshots of your RAM during debugging mode 😉

[Smiuv]

Thanks for the tips.

My question might be a bit confusing at first, because I don't use ATL on a Windows Forms application. I use it on a web application (asp.net core) and my RAM is not that big! Also, because my work is based on each request, not just an always-on application, I need to make sure of memory waste and speed. So I just wanted to make sure that I close ATL myself after each request. For example, I create a lot of objects in background tasks to detect the duration of a track. In some cases, I don't really need the images. Thanks for pointing that.

You can think of it like I use ATL many times a minute. But my problem was mostly with images, which I figured out.

I've also tried debugging and the memory is managed correctly, and I just wanted to understand how it works so that I can close it myself at the moment I want to.

[Zeugma440]

Neat. Don't hesitate to get back to me if you need any more information 👍