title: Memory usage of an empty List or Dictionary?
body: <p>How much memory is used by an empty List or Dictionary? Such as:</p>
  
  <pre><code>List&lt;double&gt; list = new List&lt;double&gt;();
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The pointer itself eats at least 32 bits on x86 and 64 of x64 OS, but what about the list itself? With 0 records.</p>
  
  <p>The reason for asking is, can you save some bytes by setting lists to <code>null</code>?</p>
  
  <p>(Imagine you have a class that contains some <code>List&lt;T&gt;</code> which in some cases is being used and in other case it is not, in that case having a <code>boolean</code> like <code>IsEmpty</code> and <code>null</code> instead of empty list might save some operating memory. Especially in case you would have thousands of such classes in operating memory, every bit counts.)</p>