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Question on GC

 
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Please help me understand the best (easy) way to tackle this kind of question. I have a trouble of getting the right answer.

How many objects are eligible for GC, after executing the line-10 of this program?


Thanks a lot for all your help.


 
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The easiest way I have found is to go through the code line by line and every time a new object is created, draw a circle on a piece of paper, write the reference variable down, and draw a line between the two. Then, when that reference gets changed, mark out the first line and draw a line to the other object (or nothing, if null). Once you get through all of the code, count how many objects don't have any more live references and tada!*

Note: You could also get an island of isolation (I think that's the term I've seen...) where some object point to each other through instance variables, but don't have any live references in the program. Even though each object technically has a reference, since there is no way to access the objects anymore, they are eligible.
 
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Thats the technique I try to use but I often get gotcha'd!
 
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what is the answer of your question, I get it as 1.
 
Tayitu Betule
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The answer is 3. Thanks Joe. I will try sketching a diagram.

Thank you guys for replying.
 
W. Joe Smith
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Tayitu Betule wrote:The answer is 3. Thanks Joe. I will try sketching a diagram.

Thank you guys for replying.



That's what I got when I drew it out. This is a pretty tricky one too, with all those nested new calls, and the constructor taking an object.
 
Neha Daga
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yup there are 3 objects eligible for gc.
 
Greenhorn
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Yes, three objects are eligible for GC,:-the object pointed to originally by gb1.g.g no
longer has a reference and also the objects pointed to originally by gb2.g and gb2.g.g also lose
any references pointing to them. I tend to use the same method as W. Joe Smith, although this was
a particularly nasty GC question. It seems to test your ability to solve puzzles rather than your
ability to program or your knowledge of Java.

Martin
 
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hey neha i have posted a new topic called object creation...my question lies there.....

thanks
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