Guidelines for using the Java 2 reference classes (IBM developerWorks)

[Posted October 23, 2002 by cook]

IBM developerWorks has an article on Java 2 reference classes. "The Java 2 platform introduced the java.lang.ref package, which contains classes that allow you to refer to objects without pinning them in memory. The classes also provide a limited degree of interaction with the garbage collector. In this article, Peter Haggar examines the functionality and behavior of the SoftReference, WeakReference, and PhantomReference classes and recommends programming idioms for their use."