CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#-4.0
Harish Parsai
Harish Parsai

Reputation: 11

query regarding Garbage collector

i know GC release the memory of obj which is not used in any further but i know one thing that GC release memory in which form of like object or refrence or value.... please help me.

thanks in advance...

Upvotes: 0

Views: 126

Answers (2)

Wyzard
Wyzard

Reputation: 34563

An object of a reference type (a class) becomes garbage when no references to it exist anymore. It will be collected some time after that, whenever the GC runs next. The reason why these objects can be garbage is because they can be referenced from multiple places in the program, so no individual part of the program can release the object because other parts might still need it. The GC's responsibility is to discover when no part of the program needs the object anymore.

An object of a value type (a struct, or a built-in type like an integer) is simply copied to each place that needs to use it, so there's no problem of one value being used from multiple parts of the program. No GC is needed for value types, because they're always part of something else that ensures they're released. A value stored on the stack (e.g. a local variable within a method) is released when the method returns. A value stored in a class object is released when that class object becomes garbage.

Upvotes: 0

DarkDust
DarkDust

Reputation: 92335

As a response to the comments to the question, it seems that you need clarification of a few concepts:

In .NET, objects live somewhere in the memory. A reference is kind of like a pointer to such an object/memory location. A value is some integral value (a number like 123).

For example, say you have an object of type MyClass, and you have created a new instance. This object contains a string. That string is another object, and your instance of MyClass holds a reference to the string object.

The garbage collector operates only on objects. It keeps track of the references to an object, if nobody is referencing the object any more the garbage collector can free that object up. In our example, if the garbage collector notices there's nobody holding a reference to the instance of MyClass, then it makes sure that object is freed. That in turn makes the reference to the string disappear, and the garbage collector can then also free the string (if nobody else is holding a reference, of course). Values don't need to be treated in any special way as they are part of the memory that belongs to an object (and thus cannot be freed "independently").

The same is true with Java, BTW.

Upvotes: 1

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