Certainly we should call Dipose() on IDisposable objects as soon as we don't need them (which is often merely the scope of a "using" statement). If we don't take that precaution then bad things, from subtle to show-stopping, might happen.

But what about "the last moment" before process termination? If your IDisposables have not been explicitly disposed by that point in time, isn't it true that it no longer matters? I ask because unmanaged resources, beneath the CLR, are represented by kernel objects - and the win32 process termination will free all unmanaged resources / kernel objects anyway. Said differently, no resources will remain "leaked" after the process terminates (regardless if Dispose() was called on lingering IDisposables).

Can anyone think of a case where process termination would still leave a leaked resource, simply because Dispose() was not explicitly called on one or more IDisposables?

Please do not misunderstand this question: I am not trying to justify ignoring IDisposables. The question is just technical-theoretical.

EDIT: And what about mono running on Linux? Is process termination there just as "reliable" at cleaning up unmanaged "leaks?"