The garbage collection is a great feature which makes the life of a programmer was easier. It releases unused variables and doing so frees memory on the heap. If you know C++ or C, you know what a pain it can be to release all unused object and variables and how easily you can forget one which will lead to a memory leak. A memory leak is caused by a variable which has a value but no reference. This means that the variable can’t be deleted and remains in the memory until the computer is restarted.
In C# the garbage collection works fully automatically and the programmer doesn’t have to worry about it. But how does it work?
Garbage Collection and variable generations
When a new variable is generated it will be placed in generation 0. The garbage collector is invoked after the generation 0 filled up. The unused variable will be deleted and the memory will be released from the heap. Variables which survive this process will be pushed into generation 1. If generation 1 is full the process will be repeated. C# knows the generations 0, 1, 2. Lower generations will be checked more frequently.
The programmer can’t start the garbage collection process. Going through all variables is an expensive task and comes with the cost of lower performance.
Further reading
In this short post, I only covered the basics on how the garbage collection works. For more detailed information see the provided links.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/garbage-collection/
https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1060/Garbage-Collection-in-NET
Comments powered by Disqus.