title: How is the c#/.net 3.5 dictionary implemented?
body: <p>I'm using an application which uses a number of large dictionaries ( up to 10^6 elements), the size of which is unknown in advance, (though I can guess in some cases). I'm wondering how the dictionary is implemented, i.e. how bad the effect is if I don't give an initial estimate of the dictionary size. Does it internally use a (self-growing) array in the way List does? in which case letting the dictionaries grow might leave a lot of large un-referenced arrays on the LOH. </p>