Garbage collection – local variable

Question

I have a doubt in garbage collection.
Please look int the below code.
I hope that even if i didn't make myLocalVar = null; , i believe that garbage collection happens immediately,
Please let me know am i right ?
void method() {
  MyClass myLocalVar = null;
  try {
    myLocalVar = get_reference_to_object();
    //.. do more here ...
  } finally {
    if (myLocalVar != null) {
      myLocalVar.close(); // it is resource which we should close
    myLocalVar = null; // THIS IS THE LINE I AM TALKING ABOUT
}

Answer 1

JEisen wrote:
es5f2000 wrote:
I'm pretty sure that there's no guarantee that GC will run at termination time. That's what causes the issue with finalize(). It is theoretically possible to start a program, run it, and cleanly terminate it without getting a GC.True. I meant more that memory will be freed when the program terminates, not necessarily garbage collected. :)
I just read about the finalize() gotcha -- never knew that. So is it possible for a program to exit without releasing I/O resources if they were being closed in finalize()?Yes and no.
The basic answer is yes, however when the VM quits from an OS level the handles/locks/etc that were being used by the VM will, god willing, be released.
A better example though is something like JDBC where you have remote resources waiting on a signal to be released. Having clean up code in finalize could well never be called and in that case the remote resources would be held on to.