How does the Garbage Collector handle reference-free objects?

Question

Hi,
I am interested to know how the GC handle's objects created
without a reference.
The reason this has become of interest to me is that I have
created a "Title" class. The Title class animates each letter of
Title.text to appear in a cloud of smoke.
The smoke is a simple particle system class, when a particle
dies it removes it's associated MovieClip so that eventually all
MovieClip's have been destroyed.
Now in the Title class for each letter I do the following
(psuedo-code):
for( Title.text.length) {
CurrentLetter.twAlpha = new Tween( blah, blah, blah); //
object created
with a reference
new Smoke( CurrentLetter.x, CurrentLetter.y); // object
created
without a reference
Although this is technique is not one I would ever have
thought of in a language that doesn't use a garbage collector it is
mentioned in the Tween documentation and my class works as
intended.
The thing is although it works, it always bothers me when I
don't know precisely
why it works!
If it's working due to the short life span of the class in
question and thus simply missing the GC's window then this could be
problematic. If at some point it is still alive when the GC is
called then my class could be prematurely deleted.
Maybe a class which has a reference to an "alive" MovieClip
is immune from GC?
I Hope someone can shed some light on this topic as the GC is
something that is thinly documented to say the least!
:theory
p.s. first post!

Answer 1

Hi,
I would say it would be better use FREE itab at the end of the processing in your code. In the end-of-selection in your code, you can FREE all your itabs that were used in the program. This is one of the good approach of optimizing the memory.
Regards
Vimal