Destruction

Although Vala manages the memory for you, you might need to add your own destructor if you choose to do manual memory management with pointers (more on that later) or if you have to release other resources. The syntax is the same as in C# and C++:

class Demo : Object {
    ~Demo() {
        stdout.printf("in destructor");
    }
}

Since Vala's memory management is based on reference counting instead of tracing garbage collection, destructors are deterministic and can be used to implement the RAII pattern for resource management (closing streams, database connections, ...).