Regarding Garbage collection

Question

It says the finalize() method must be used only when its failure to execute predictably will not cause problems for the application. How does one ensure that problems would not be caused in the application if the finalize method fails?

Answer 1

mehulnewton wrote:
It says the finalize() method must be used only when its failure to execute predictably will not cause problems for the application. How does one ensure that problems would not be caused in the application if the finalize method fails?OP:
It's not a matter of making sure that the finalize() contents are safe. According to the official Java documentation, if an exception is thrown in finalize() it will be silently ignored.
All it's saying is that you shouldn't put anything in there that controls your program flow. For example, this would be a bad idea:
public class Main {
   public static boolean run = true;
   public static void main() {
      WeirdObject object = new WeirdObject();
      while ( run ) { /*do nothing*/}
   private static class WeirdObject {
      protected void finalize() throws Throwable {
         super.finalize();
         run = false;
}