Thanks. In the case of Node.createClone(), I could see how back-pointers could be a problem (although I think the documentation says everything should be a copy when the clone is complete.). However, for Document.newElement(), assuming we don't use setUserData() or similar methods, are there any back pointers to other nodes in the document?
From: Michael Glavassevich [mailto:mrgla...@ca.ibm.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2009 8:49 AM To: j-users@xerces.apache.org Subject: Re: Node without parent eligible for garbage collection or pinned by Document? Hi Gary, They will usually be eligible for garbage collection, however there are some operations (e.g. setUserData()) which will pin down the memory even if the Node is otherwise orphaned. Basically there are a bunch of structures in the Document node impl which might have back-pointers to other nodes in the document that can't be cleared until the application no longer has any references to those nodes. Future versions of Xerces will use SoftReferences and WeakReferences in these places so such nodes can be garbage collected earlier. Thanks. Michael Glavassevich XML Parser Development IBM Toronto Lab E-mail: mrgla...@ca.ibm.com E-mail: mrgla...@apache.org "Gary Hirschhorn" <ghirschh...@fetch.com> wrote on 04/22/2009 11:34:46 AM: > If I create new Nodes via Node.createClone() or Document. > newElement(), I now have a Node that belongs to a Document, but has > no parent Node. With regards to garbage collection, if this new Node > is no longer reachable by the objects in my code, is it eligible for > garbage collection, or is there some internal pointer from Document > that will pin this Node in memory until the Document is garbage collected? > > Thanks, > Gary
