Java Memory Management

In Java, memory is allocated only to objects. There is no explicit allocation of memory, there is only the creation of new objects. (Java even treats array types as objects.) The Java runtime employs a garbage collector that reclaims the memory occupied by an object once it determines that object is no longer accessible. This automatic process makes it safe to throw away unneeded object references because the garbage collector does not collect the object if it is still needed elsewhere. Therefore, in Java the act of letting go of unneeded references never runs the risk of deallocating memory prematurely. In Java, it's easy to let go of an entire "tree" of objects by setting the reference to the tree's root to null; the garbage collector will then reclaim all the objects (unless some of the objects are needed elsewhere). This is a lot easier than coding each of the objects' destructors to let go of its own dependencies (which is a coding-level problem with C++).