Specifications

Sun Services

Java™ Programming Language

Module 1, slide 11 of 23

Garbage Collection

• Allocated memory that is no longer needed should be

deallocated.

• In other languages, deallocation is the programmer’s

responsibility.

• The Java programming language provides a

system-level thread to track memory allocation.

• Garbage collection has the following characteristics:

• Checks for and frees memory no longer needed

• Is done automatically

• Can vary dramatically across JVM implementations