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POBad practice? Non-canon usage of c#'s using statement
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copied!<p>C# has the <code>using</code> statement, specifically for IDisposable objects. Presumably, any object specified in the <code>using</code> statement will hold some sort of resource that should be freed deterministically.</p> <p>However, it seems to me that there are many designs in programming which have a single, definite beginning and end, but lack intrinsic language support. The <code>using</code> construct provides an opportunity to use the built in features of a code editor to, at least, clearly and naturally highlight the scope of such a design or operation.</p> <p>What I have in mind is the sort of operation that frequently starts with a <code>BeginXXX()</code> and <code>EndXXX()</code> method, though there are plenty of different flavors, such as an asynchronous code execution that involves a "start" and a "join".</p> <p>Take this naive example.</p> <pre><code>webDataOperation.Start(); GetContentFromHardDrive(); webDataOperation.Join(); // Perform operation that requires data from both sources </code></pre> <p>What if, instead, the Start method returned an object whose <code>IDisposable.Dispose</code> method performs the join operation.</p> <pre><code>using(webDataOperation.Start()) { GetContentFromHardDrive(); } // Perform operation that requires data from both sources </code></pre> <p>Or, better yet, what I specifically had in mind: I have an object that does highly specialized graphics blitting and has a <code>Begin()</code> and <code>End()</code> method (a design also present in DirectX and XNA). Instead...</p> <pre><code>using(blitter.BlitOperation()) { // Do work } // Use result </code></pre> <p>It seems to be more natural and readable, but is it inadvisable, seeing as it uses the <code>IDisposable</code> interface and the <code>using</code> statement for unintended purposes? In other words, would this be on par with o<em>verloading an operator in a non-intuitive way</em>?</p>

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