Effective Java 06 Eliminate obsolete object references

NOTE

Nulling out object references should be the exception rather than the norm.

Another common source of memory leaks is caches.
Once you put an object reference into a cache, it's easy to forget that it's there and leave it in the cache long after it becomes irrelevant. There are several solutions to this problem. If you're lucky enough to implement a cache for which an entry is relevant exactly so long as there are references to its key outside of the cache, represent the cache as a WeakHashMap; entries will be removed automatically after they become obsolete. Remember that WeakHashMap is useful only if the desired lifetime of cache entries is determined by external references to the key, not the value. (LinkedHashMap can remove the oldest cache item by reomveEldestEntry. More is in java.lang.ref)

A third common source of memory leaks is listeners and other callbacks.

// Can you spot the "memory leak"?

public class Stack {

private Object[] elements;

private int size = 0;

private static final int DEFAULT_INITIAL_CAPACITY = 16;

public Stack() {

elements = new Object[DEFAULT_INITIAL_CAPACITY];

}

public void push(Object e) {

ensureCapacity();

elements[size++] = e;

}

public Object pop() {

if (size == 0)

throw new EmptyStackException();

Object result = elements[--size];

elements[size] = null; // Eliminate obsolete reference

return result;

}

/**

* Ensure space for at least one more element, roughly

* doubling the capacity each time the array needs to grow.

*/

private void ensureCapacity() {

if (elements.length == size)

elements = Arrays.copyOf(elements, 2 * size + 1);

}

}