Garbage Memory Collection (GC) Task
A Garbage Memory Collection (GC) Task is an automated computer memory management task that reclaims garbage, or memory occupied by objects that are no longer in use by the program
- Context:
- It can be performed by a Garbage Memory Collector.
- …
- Example(s):
- See: Java Object, Garbage Collector, Computer Memory Management, Destructor (Computer Science), Manual Memory Management, Stack-Based Memory Allocation.
References
2020
- (Wikipedia, 2020) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_collection_(computer_science) Retrieved:2020-8-23.
- In computer science, garbage collection (GC) is a form of automatic memory management. The garbage collector, or just collector, attempts to reclaim garbage, or memory occupied by objects that are no longer in use by the program. Garbage collection was invented by American computer scientist John McCarthy around 1959 to simplify manual memory management in Lisp.
Garbage collection relieves the programmer from performing manual memory management where the programmer specifies what objects to deallocate and return to the memory system and when to do so. Other similar techniques include stack allocation, region inference, memory ownership, and combinations of multiple techniques. Garbage collection may take a significant proportion of total processing time in a program and, as a result, can have significant influence on performance.
Resources other than memory, such as network sockets, database handles, user interaction windows, file and device descriptors, are not typically handled by garbage collection. Methods used to manage such resources, particularly destructors, may suffice to manage memory as well, leaving no need for GC. Some GC systems allow such other resources to be associated with a region of memory that, when collected, causes the work of reclaiming these resources.
- In computer science, garbage collection (GC) is a form of automatic memory management. The garbage collector, or just collector, attempts to reclaim garbage, or memory occupied by objects that are no longer in use by the program. Garbage collection was invented by American computer scientist John McCarthy around 1959 to simplify manual memory management in Lisp.
2011
- "Garbage Collection (C# vs Java)", http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms228629%28v=vs.80%29.aspx
- QUOTE: In C and C++, many objects require the programmer to allocate their resources once declared, before the objects can be safely used. Releasing these resources back to the free memory pool once the object has been used is also the responsibility of the programmer. If resources are not released, the code is said to leak memory, as more and more resources are consumed needlessly. On the other hand, if resources are released prematurely, loss of data, the corruption of other memory areas, and null pointer exceptions can occur.
Both Java and C# prevent these dangers by independently managing the lifetime of all objects in use by an application.
In Java, the JVM takes care of releasing unused memory by keeping track of the references to allocated resources. Whenever the JVM detects that a resource is no longer referenced by a valid reference, the resource is garbage-collected.
In C#, garbage collection is handled by the common language runtime (CLR) with similar functionality to that of the JVM. The CLR garbage collector periodically checks the memory heap for any unreferenced objects, and releases the resources held by these objects.
- QUOTE: In C and C++, many objects require the programmer to allocate their resources once declared, before the objects can be safely used. Releasing these resources back to the free memory pool once the object has been used is also the responsibility of the programmer. If resources are not released, the code is said to leak memory, as more and more resources are consumed needlessly. On the other hand, if resources are released prematurely, loss of data, the corruption of other memory areas, and null pointer exceptions can occur.
1996
- http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-08-1996/jw-08-gc.html
- The JVM's heap stores all objects created by an executing Java program. Objects are created by Java's "new" operator, and memory for new objects is allocated on the heap at run time. Garbage collection is the process of automatically freeing objects that are no longer referenced by the program. This frees the programmer from having to keep track of when to free allocated memory, thereby preventing many potential bugs and headaches. The name “garbage collection” implies that objects that are 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 must be recycled so that the space is 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. In the process of freeing unreferenced objects, the garbage collector must run any finalizers of objects being freed.