Hi all,
what is the purpose of garbage collection?

Hi buddy,

I think you are a new bee to all those technologies .

The purpose of garbage collection is to identify and discard objects that are no longer needed by a program so that their resources can be reclaimed and reused. A Java object is subject to garbage collection when it becomes unreachable to the program in which it is used.

Hope helpfull.

Oxygen

The name "garbage collection" implies that objects no longer needed by the program are "garbage" and can be thrown away. A more accurate and up-to-date metaphor might be "memory recycling." When an object is no longer referenced by the program, the heap space it occupies can be recycled so that the space is made available for subsequent new objects. The garbage collector must somehow determine which objects are no longer referenced by the program and make available the heap space occupied by such unreferenced objects.

hey,

I hope this will help you,

A Garbage collection is that it helps ensure program integrity. Garbage collection is an important part of Java's security strategy. Java programmers are unable to accidentally (or purposely) crash the JVM by incorrectly freeing memory.

A potential disadvantage of a garbage-collected heap is that it adds an overhead that can affect program performance. The JVM has to keep track of which objects are being referenced by the executing program, and finalize and free unreferenced objects on the fly. This activity will likely require more CPU time than would have been required if the program explicitly freed unnecessary memory. In addition, programmers in a garbage-collected environment have less control over the scheduling of CPU time devoted to freeing objects that are no longer needed.

Fortunately, very good garbage collection algorithms have been developed, and adequate performance can be achieved for all but the most demanding of applications. Because Java's garbage collector runs in its own thread, it will, in most cases, run transparently alongside the execution of the program. Plus, if a programmer really wants to explicitly request a garbage collection at some point, System.gc() or Runtime.gc() can be invoked, which will fire off a garbage collection at that time.

The Java programmer must keep in mind that it is the garbage collector that runs finalizers on objects. Because it is not generally possible to predict exactly when unreferenced objects will be garbage collected, it is not possible to predict when object finalizers will be run. Java programmers, therefore, should avoid writing code for which program correctness depends upon the timely finalization of objects. For example, if a finalizer of an unreferenced object releases a resource that is needed again later by the program, the resource will not be made available until after the garbage collector has run the object finalizer.

__________________
Venkat
knowledge is Power