Devak ExamLab - Garbage Collection

I need your help:
The following is from Mr. Devaka's ExamLab SCJP Simulator :
Practice Exam 1, question 42:

How many objects are eligible for the Garbage Collector, after executing the line-9 of this programm. F.Y.I: Array is an object.

1. public class Gabc{
2. Gabc ob[];
3. public Gabc(Gabc... gb){
4. ob=gb;
5. }
6. public static void main(String args[]){
7. Gabc bc=new Gabc(new Gabc(),new Gabc());
8. bc.ob[1].ob=new Gabc[]{new Gabc(),bc.ob[0]};
9. bc.ob[0]=null;
10. System.gc();
11. }
12. public void finalize(){
13. System.out.println("-GCed-");
14. }
15. }

According to ExamLab the answer is: A 0, means at that point no Object is eligible for the gc.
What I think is that after executing line 8, there is one Object eligible for the gc: The Object, that was referred before by
bc.ob[1].ob - an array of length 0. So shouldn't the answer be: B 1?

Thanks for your clarification.

Please read this topic.

Of course have I read the topic before and reread it. But it doesn't help. After lots of thinking I am pretty shure that the object - after execution of line 7 - referred by bc.ob[1].ob is eligible for gc when code-line 8 is done. You can proofe me wrong by telling me the reference to his object after line 8.
It is true that there will never ever be an output (generated from the finalize method) because the mentioned object is an Gabc[] of length 0. But this doesn't proof - even in case the gc would always run when envoking System.gc() - that there's no Object at all eligible for gc. It only shows that there's no Gabc object eligible for gc.
Anyone agrees?

hi rouven,

Yeah you are right!
when i saw the code before reading your view, i thought there wont be any objects available for GC.
But as you said, there will be one available for GC (array object of length 0 which was previously referenced by bc.ob[1].ob).

This looks like a tricky question. I guess as the constructor accepts var-args as parameter, when there is no parameter passed, its creating an array of length 0.

Lets see what others have to say!

Whoa!

You are correct. I'll correct this as soon as possible!

Rouven, could you please use code tags, it is quite a challenge to read code as complex as this is, especially if not formatted clearly!

Many Thanks

rouven gorsky please QuoteYourSources

sudipto shekhar wrote:rouven gorsky please QuoteYourSources

He already clearly mentioned that this is from Devaka's ExamLab practice exam.

Jesper Young wrote:
He already clearly mentioned that this is from Devaka's ExamLab practice exam.