CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptgarbage-collection
daniel
daniel

Reputation: 193

Does referencing a child object prevent the parent object from being garbage collected in javascript

Say I have an object

let a = {
  b: {
    name: "Sugarcane"
  }
}

and I do

let c = a.b

and I later nullify the a object like so:

a = null

does the reference to b object by c prevent the previous object stored in a from being garbage collected in Javascript?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 220

Answers (1)

Gamedroit
Gamedroit

Reputation: 385

Actually no, as long as there is a reference to the object stored in memory, the GC will not be able to free this object from memory.

When you nullify object A it is removed from memory, but this does not affect its properties if they are objects and are stored in another variable.

You are just changing the reference from A to NULL, but B will continue to exist in memory as long as C continues to have its reference stored.

B will only be removed from memory when C is nullified.

let a = {
    b: {
        name: "Sugarcane"
    }
};

let c = a.b;

a = null;

console.log(
    "A value: ", a,
    "\nC value:", c,
    "\nC.name value:", c.name
);

Upvotes: 1

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