
In both cases, GC and ARC, the memory claiming events are not controlled by the developer each OS/environment has its own rules for deciding when to execute memory claiming events. In the case of the Android languages, there is the Garbage Collector (GC) of the virtual machine (ART/DVM), and in Swift there is the Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) mechanism. Java, Kotlin, and Swift have mechanisms for automatically reclaiming unused memory.

("WeakHashMap size after GC= " + studentMap.The mobile development languages (i.e., Java, Kotlin, Swift) are high-level languages in which memory management has not to be done by the developer, conversely to other languages like C in which memory has to be allocated and released by the developer. ("Initial WeakHashMap size = " + studentMap.size()) WeakHashMap studentMap = new WeakHashMap() The behavior of the WeakHashMap class depends in part upon the actions of the garbage collector though. Here is an example that displays the effect of running System.gc() for WeakHashMap. Once an object has no references or has only weak references, it becomes eligible for garbage collection.Ī WeakHashMap uses only weak references to its key values. A synchronized WeakHashMap may be constructed using the Collections.synchronizedMap method.Īn object can have both weak and string (normal) references.Īs long as at least one strong reference exists to the object, the referenced object can never be garbage collected.Ī weak reference by itself doesnot prevent an object from being garbage collected. It supports null values and the null key. This allows an element in the map to be garbage-collected when the key is unused. A WeakHashMap implements a map that uses a weak reference to the keys.
