Finalize

[shetal bansal]

Can an object be finalized more than once?

[Chitra AP]

No, finalize() method will be called by the Garbage collector only once, for an object.

[Tony Morris]

No, finalize() method will be called by the Garbage collector only once, for an object.

This is not true.
Are you referring to explicitly holding a strong reference to the object being collected in the finalize() method?

[Satya Marivada]

Hi,

Finalize() method will be called only once just before the garbage collector runs for that object. If you avoid the garbage collector to run on that object by holding the refernce to that object in finalize() method, then the garbage collector will not run for that object. Later even if the object becomes eligible for garbage collection, the finalize() method for that object will not run.

Thanks,
Satya

[Jeroen Wenting]

Correct, however often the object comes before the garbage collector finalization will happen only the first time (which means that effectively an object can probably not come before the garbage collector more than twice unless there's something weird happening in the garbage collector and thus in the JVM internals, situations outside the scope of the SCJP exam as they'd be JVM implementation specific and most likely bugs.