Question

I remembered someone telling me one good one. But i cannot remember it. I spent the last 20mins with google trying to learn more.

What are examples of bad/not great code that causes a performance hit due to garbage collection ?

Answer 1

from an old sun tech tip — sometimes it helps to explicitly nullify references in order to make them eligible for garbage collection earlier:

public class Stack {   private static final int MAXLEN = 10;   private Object stk[] = new Object[MAXLEN];   private int stkp = -1;    public void push(Object p) {stk[++stkp] = p;}    public Object pop() {return stk[stkp--];} } 

rewriting the pop method in this way helps ensure that garbage collection gets done in a timely fashion:

public Object pop() {   Object p = stk[stkp];   stk[stkp--] = null;   return p; }