Why is it OK to create this without assigning a reference to it?

[deleyd]

In the following sample code I got from a book on Java, my question is about line 30:

      new Agent(name);

We're creating something here, but we aren't saving a reference to this new thing we just created.

I have this apparently mistaken idea that when you no longer have a reference to something the garbage collector will deallocate it. Why doesn't that happen here? When is this true and when is this not true?

/******************************************************************
* FundRaiser.java
* Dean & Dean
*
* This program manages find-raising agents.
******************************************************************/

import java.util.Scanner;

public class FundRaiser
{
  public static final double GOAL = 10000.00

  //****************************************************************

  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    Scanner stdIn = new Scanner(System.in);
    int numberOfAgents;
    double totalValue;
    String name;

    System.out.print("Enter total number of agents: ");
    numberOfAgents = stdIn.nextInt();
    stdIn.nextLine();
    for (int i=0; i<numberOfAgents; i++)
    {
      System.out.print("Enter agent name: ");
      name = stdIn.nextLine();
      new Agent(name);
    }
    do
    {
      Agent.addAllValues();
      totalValue = Agent.getAllValues();
      System.out.printf("Total value = $%,.2f\n", totalValue);
    } while (totalValue < GOAL);
    System.out.println("Time to Spend!");
  } // end main
} // end FundRaiser class

(I'd post the rest, but shouldn't encapsulation be such that we shouldn't have to dig into what goes on underneath in order to understand what's going on at a high level?)

[KevinWorkman]

It very well could be garbage collected, unless it's being added to some kind of a Collection (and therefore a reference to it still exists). We can't see what's happening in Agent, so we can't really tell you what's going on.

But yeah, throwaways like that happen all the time. You probably do it yourself without even knowing it. For example, that System.out.printf() is returning a PrintStream (check the API if you don't believe me), but you don't do anything with it. There's no rule saying you have to store something in a reference variable, and sometimes that's very useful.

[Iron Lion]

Without looking at the Agent class it's hard to think why such a call would be made, but one possible reason I can think of is that the constructor passes a reference to the instance to some other object:

class Agent {
    static ArrayList<Agent> instances = new ArrayList<Agent>();
    //...
    public Agent() {
        //...
        instances.add(this);
    }
}

[Dark]

Agent.addAllValues();

Either you can call parts of Agent with it being instantiated or it references itself when you construct it. You can make objects automatically perform certain tasks when you instantiate them. If you haven't learned about that yet, don't worry it becomes much more clear later.