Is there any hook provided to register a thread with garbage collection in java?

Question

JVM provides you a hook to register a thread with the shutdown initiation sequence. Once a thread is registered, on every shutdown that thread is run.

Now, is there any such a hook java provide to register a thread with JVM's Garbage collector?

Hooks are specified points, where the developer can specify methods or callbacks to be executed. — Prashant Shilimkar, Dec 09 '13 at 08:49

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 09 '13 at 09:17

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Not exactly a hook, but you can use a WeakReference to be notified that an object has become eligible to be garbage collected.

answered Dec 09 '13 at 09:17

Stuart Marks

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 09 '13 at 09:28

There are WeakReferences as already mentioned but there are also Phantom References

All of these techniques just allow you to monitor garbage collection on specific objects though.

There is a good description of phantom references here: http://java.dzone.com/articles/finalization-and-phantom

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

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You do have finalizers, but they're not guaranteed to run.

Further discussion about why finalizers may not run in this thread: When is the finalize() method called in Java?

edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

Community

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answered Dec 09 '13 at 08:48

Kayaman

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Is there any hook provided to register a thread with garbage collection in java?

3 Answers3