Sorry David buts that's what the JVM spec says. You can set a reference to null, and the object is
eligible for garbage collection, but you cannot
force it. There are books you can read and probably online refences on Sun's web site.
The implementation is generally a mark and sweep implementation on a low priority
thread, and if you code simple experiments, you can see garbage collection in action, by overriding the finalize method and then callng System.gc after setting references on instances to null.
Regards,
Howard Kushner<br />IBM Certified Enterprise Developer - WebSphere Studio Application Developer V5.0<br />IBM Certified Advanced System Administrator - WebSphere Application Server V5.0<br />IBM Certified Solution Developer - Web Services with WebSphere Studio V5.1<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1931182108/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Developing J2EE Applications with WebSphere Studio</a> my Certification Study Guide for IBM Test 287