finalise method of Garbage Collection

[Deeps Mistry]

Hi everyone,

I came across this question in an interview :

I have an object reference = null;
Hence it is eligible for gc. Before the object is garbage collected, finalise method is called. What if in the finalise method i assign the reference a new object.

Is it still eligible for garbage collection?



Thanks.

[Wouter Oet]

References aren't GC'ed. Objects are.

If an object doesn't have any valid references any more it can be GC'ed. If a reference to that object is created in the finalize method it will not be GC'ed because
it has a valid reference to it.

[Deeps Mistry]

Wouter Oet wrote:References aren't GC'ed. Objects are.

If an object doesn't have any valid references any more it can be GC'ed. If a reference to that object is created in the finalize method it will not be GC'ed because
it has a valid reference to it.

Thanks so much!!!

[Rob Spoor]

But because objects will only be finalized zero or one times, the object will not be garbage collected or finalized anymore after that, even if there are no more references. This will lead to memory leaks, and therefore you shouldn't do this.

[Campbell Ritchie]

. . . but it may not be GC-ed properly because the finalise() method is not called twice. If you re-create a reference and another attempt at garbage collection is made, finalise() has already been called, so it won't be called again.