Memory Leak Doubt

Question

Hi All,
I have a doubt about memory leak in Java.
Consider the following code.
public class Class1 implements java.io.Serializable
private static java.util.ArrayList known = new java.util.ArrayList();
private final String name;
private final int value;
protected Class1(String name, int value)
this.name = name;
this.value = value;
synchronized (Class1.class)
known.add(this);
Now, if i create an instance of the Class1 in my code and use it in a method.
So once the method ends, the instance of Class1 shoud get garbage collected by GC right???
But it is not happening, becoz the same instance is added to a static arraylist in the Class.
Is the above phenomenon an example of Memory Leak?
Please clarify it.
Thanks,
Ravi Ambati

Answer 1

Can i say that this is a bug in Java 1.5?What you posted? No, you can't call it a bug. What you posted only shows instance references being placed into a static array. What you failed to posted is whether or not anything actually removes them, like a dispose method which is explicitly called by some other class as part of a controlled usage pattern.
If the code is creating lots of instances and never removing them from the list, I would call that a memory leak, so it's a bug. If it has a means to remove the items from the list, then it's not a memory leak. But there could still be a bug in that the disposal method may not always get called when it should. But that would be a bug elsewhere.
I've done applications before that do exactly the same type of thing, the constructor adds itself to some singleton manager class to keep track of the objects. But when I don't need them anymore, there's a method to dispose the object, which includes removing itself from the manager class.