Robin Garner wrote:
I don't understand. How can weak references help short-lived objects
reclaim?
Really what I'm saying is that this is the closest thing we have to a
hint to GC that objects can be collected soon - but it is not anything
like a proper free() call. There is no immediate reclaim of memory,
just the possibility that it will be reclaimed soon - and the object
may be garbage collected before you are finished with it!
Regards,
Oliver
Actually, it's kind of the other way around isn't it ? Nulling the
last pointer to an object tells the GC that it can collect it
(explicitly in the case of reference counting), whereas having a Weak
Reference to an object says 'please tell me when on-one else wants
this object', which results in the object staying around even longer.
Isn't this only the case if you register the WeakReference with a
ReferenceQueue?
If you do not do that, then the GC can collect the referent when it
wants, and you will
just get a null back from a get() call on any WeakReference object.
So I imagine that keeping the object weakly reachable and not
registering it with
a ReferenceQueue says to the GC "you are free to collect this referent
object at the
next collection if you wish".
Regards,
Oliver
cheers,
Robin
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Oliver Deakin
IBM United Kingdom Limited
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