(Computer science) Gargabe collection

Garbage collection is a term used for memory management. Programming languages provide different mechanisms for allocating memory. In the C programming language the malloc function if responsible for allocating memory while in Java and C++ the new keyword creates memory space for objects. When the program is finished with this memory the allocated space must be freed back to the operating system. If the memory is not returned it leaves the possibility of potential memory leaks, memory that was never freed.

Older programming languages like C and C++ are implemented with manual garbage collection, giving the responsibility of freeing memory to the programmer. Newer languages like Java have their own built in automatic garbage collection.

Automatic Memory management is an alternative to traditional resource management. Some programming language and compilers support it (Java), support it optionally (C# .NET) or do not yet support it (C++). Automating the garbage collection process makes memory leaks impossible, making software development shorter. Object oriented languages, however, supply classes enabling to let the garbage collection be delegated to these classes. This also makes memory leaks virtually impossible.

Here is a partial list of the type of garbage collecting systems out there.

Mark and Sweep
Incremental garbage collection
Compacting garbage collection/Stop and Copy
Compacting, Incremental garbage collection
Generational garbage collection
Big bag of Pages

Note: Some of these techniques can be combined

'Garbage collection' links

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last edited (November 18, 2006) by bilderbikkel, Number of views: 1036, Current Rev: 1

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