If I have two objects on the heap referring to each other but they are not linking to any reference variable then are those objects eligible for garbage collection?
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If I have two objects on the heap referring to each other but they are not linking to any reference variable then are those objects eligible for garbage collection?
Yes, they are. Basically the GC walks from ‘known roots’ (static variables, local variables from all stack frames in alll threads) to find objects which can’t be garbage collected. If there’s no way of getting to an object from a root, it’s eligible for collection.
EDIT: Tom pointed this out, which I thought was worth lifting into the answer itself:
The difference is likely to be irrelevant most of the time, but it’s good to know 🙂