How bad is it to call System.gc()

Question

Can some one please shed some lite?

Answer 1

In case you haven�t seen this, here is what Arnold, Gosling and Holmes say in "The Java Programming Language" 12.4 Interacting with the Garbage Collector.
�The garbage collector may not be able to free any additional memory when Runtime.gc is invoked. There may be no garbage to collect, and not all garbage collectors can find collectable objects on demand. So invoking the garbage collector may have no effect whatsoever. However, before creating a large number of objects--especially in a time-critical application that might be affected by garbage-collection overhead--invoking gc may be advisable. Doing so has two potential benefits: you start with as much free memory as possible, and you reduce the likelihood of the garbage collector running during the task.�