Q about Garbage Collector

[m00nchile]

Just a quick one, I wrote up a practice program that creates a binary search tree. The nodes are defined like this:

private class Node {
	int data;
	Node parent, lchild, rchild;
	public Node(int d, Node p, Node l, Node r) {
		data = d;
		parent = p;
		lchild = l;
		rchild = r;
	}
}

Removing the nodes from the tree is handled by skipping, like this:

Node n; //the node I want to remove, assume it's initialized and has a non-null left child
int data = n.data;
n = n.parent;
if(data < n.data) //since this is a binary search tree, lesser values will alway be contained in the left subtree
    n.lchild = n.lchild.lchild;
else
    n.rchild = n.rchild.lchild;

Now, the node I skipped is no longer referenced by any active object, but it still references it's parent and child/children. Will it be removed by the garbage collector or not?

[Turtle]

You are right.

When an object is no longer referenced it becomes eligable for garbage collection.
It does not matter if the "to be garbage collected" object references another object.

However, exactly when the garbage collection process cleans up those eligable objects is up to the JVM.

You can suggest that garbage collection runs by System.gc(), but this is not gauranteed.

[m00nchile]

Thanks a lot!
This program is only studying for an exam, but the question has been bugging me, it wouldn't be a very good habit to write memory leaks.

[Turtle]

If your studying for the SCJP exam then "A programmer's guide to Java certification: a comprehensive primer By Khalid Azim Mughal, Rolf W. Rasmussen" is an excellent book. Very consise.

Best of luck

[m00nchile]

Nah, it's a course at my uni. And besides, reference material is quite plentiful thanks to our professor, it's just this one little tidbit that bugged me.
Thanks again!