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Language: Java Language
Expertise: Beginner

Mar 6, 2000

Question:
In VB, you can release the object's memory with the following:

set object = nothing

How do you accomplish the same thing in Java?

Answer:
The analogous way of doing this is to set an object to null:

object = null;

However, this does not immediately free the memory used by the class instance. This only reduces the number of references to the memory by one. If this action causes the number of references to go down to zero, then the memory becomes eligible for garbage collection. The garbage collector does not immediately reclaim the memory, but most JVMs will free the memory shortly afterward. You can ask the garbage collector to run using System.gc(), which does not provide any guarantee regarding when it will run, but often causes the garbage collector to run immediately.