Use Free to destroy an object. Free automatically calls the Destroy if the object instance is not nil. Any object instantiated at runtime thatdo
es not have an Owner should be destroyed by a call to Free, so that the object can be properly destroyed and the memory released. Free is successful even if the object is nil, so if the object was never initialized, for example, calling Free won抰 result in an error.
When you call Free for a component, it will call Free for all components that it owns, that is, all components in its component list. A form owns all the controls and non-visual components that are created on it in design mode. When it is freed, all of these components are automatically freed as well. Since, by default, all forms are owned by the Application object, when the application terminates, it frees the Application object, which frees all forms. For all objects that are not components, or for components created by a nil owner, be sure to call Free after you are finished with the object;
otherwise the memory allocated to the object will not be usable until after the application terminates.
You should never explicitly free a component within one of its own event handlers, nor should you free a component from an event handler of a component the component owns or contains. For example, you should avoid freeing a button in its OnClick event handler. Nor should you free the form that owns the button from the button's OnClick event.
If you want to free the form, call the Release method, which destroys the form and releases the memory allocated for it after all its event handlers and those of the components it contains are through executing.
