Destroying Objects

[clare]

I am creating lots of different objects within objects for a GUI based application, I am using this.dispose
to free up the resources but i am finding that after a while the system slows down and eventually stops,
is this becuase the objects remain in memory? if so how can i delete them. Each object is being created
in a different class so i cannot set the object to null from its own class as it won't compile as it doesn't recognise the objects
thanks

 

[Chrissirhc]

Clare if

 

[rotovegasBoy]

Um well java is supposed to do garbage collecting automatically so as soon as you no longer use an object it should disappear from memory. What i've found is that java waits until the cpu utilisation goes down below a threshold before it does its garbage collecting, but java uses so much memory that often it doesn't get done for quite some time. The only thing i can think of is to force garbage collection at a point in your program. Unfortunately I can't find any refference on how to do this. Also have you got any threads running? I was involved in developing a simulation system in java and the use of threads as well as gui stuff really slowed things down.

Chris Packham
kriz@i4free.co.nz

A thousand mokeys at a thousand machines, it happened, it got called the internet.

 

[andyjdavis]

Java wont reclaim memory until you run out of it.

You can manually kick start the garbage collector using System.gc() from memory. Be warned that this may cause the system to grind to a halt for a few seconds so be careful when you call it.

Threads are far more likely to cause the kind of slowdown that you spoke of than is memory shortage. Just something to think about.