java.util.LinkedList clear() improvement

[Christopher Hegarty -Sun Microsystems Ireland]

I think this change was made to address:

4863813: Stressing single LinkedList from multiple threads causes 
heapspace to completely

   http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=4863813

-Chris.

Guy Korland wrote:
> How does it help the GC?
> As I understand the M&S algorithm, there's no real advantages in doing so.
> 
> In fact in many places to "null" references is considered to be an
> anti pattern in java.
> 
> Guy
> 
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 4:37 PM, Tom Hawtin<Thomas.Hawtin at sun.com> wrote:
>> Guy Korland wrote:
>>
>>> It seems like linkedList.clear() can be easily fixed to O(1) instead of
>>> O(n).
>> The code is like that on purpose(!). It was done to help GC, in mustang
>> IIRC. There really isn't a problem with clear() being O(n) - it's going to
>> take at least O(n) to populate it, and in reality *many* times more cycles.
>>
>> Tom
>>
> 
> 
>