verbose:gc

[Younes Essouabni]

Hi everybody,
I'm using the verbose:gc option and I get some thing like this

[GC 1814K->1398K(1984K), 0.0004230 secs]
[GC 1866K->1450K(2112K), 0.0004858 secs]
[Full GC 1450K->212K(2112K), 0.0102848 secs]
[GC 679K->341K(1984K), 0.0005833 secs]
[GC 809K->419K(1984K), 0.0005903 secs]

could you please explain me how to understand those values?(1814K-->1398K(1984K))
At line Full GC 1450K->212K(2112K), 0.0102848 secs does it mean that the GC is called to work??
Thx in advance!

[Cindy Glass]

Well, it looks like your particular JVM is doing partial cleanups in between full cleanups.
However Sun did not actually write all the JVMs and the JVM specs leave quite a bit of room as to how the gc function can be done. Including what messages are spurted out.

[Jim Yingst]

The line
[GC 1814K->1398K(1984K), 0.0004230 secs]
means GC ran for .0004230 sec and reduced the amound of heap memory used from 1814 KB to 1398 KB. Currently 1984 KB are allocated for the heap, though that's not necessarily the maximum possible. If memory use gets too high and GC can't reduce it enough, the JVM will request more from the OS. As long as the OS has memory available, heap size may increase up to the limit set by the -Xmx option. At least, that's how it works for SDK 1.4 on Windows - may be different for other JVM's.
[ June 27, 2002: Message edited by: Jim Yingst ]

[Younes Essouabni]

Thx Cindy and Jim for your answers, it helped me a lot!