weak vs phantom references

[Per Liden]

On 2018-11-03 09:58, Michał Zegan wrote:
> I am asking only for educational purposes.
> Yes, i sort of remember that PhantomReferences were not cleared when
> enqueued contrary to all other ones before, but now they are.
> So if, as said, finalization didn't exist, then for me enqueuing a weak
> reference seems the same as enqueuing a phantom one, because in both
> cases they are cleared, and in both cases you cannot access their
> referents. And such an object would probably also be eligible for
> collection.

Yes, if the concept of finalization didn't exist, then weakly reachable 
and phantom reachable would be the same thing, and there would be no 
need to separate the two.

cheers,
Per

> 
> W dniu 03.11.2018 o 02:01, Mandy Chung pisze:
>>
>>
>> On 11/2/18 4:15 PM, Michał Zegan wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>> Something that is not clear to me. If some object is referenced to by a
>>> weak reference, it means it is not yet finalized, in the case of objects
>>> being phantom reachable, they may be finalized but are still not garbage
>>> collected.
>>
>> If an object is phantom reachable, it has been finalized.  In addition,
>> when the referent of the phantom reference is cleared, the referent is
>> eligible for reclaimed.
>>> My question is: if finalization wouldn't be used and you had a guarantee
>>> that it isn't used for the given object, could weak references be used
>>> in place of phantom references for cleanup purposes?
>>> I know that phantom references must be registered with a ref queue and
>>> you cannot get the referent using their get() method, but weak
>>> references can also be registered into a queue, and in any case, when
>>> any kind of reference lands in a queue, it is guaranteed that it is
>>> already cleared, so if you use weak references for cleanup by polling
>>> them from the queue, you also cannot access the referent.
>>> Not sure if I understand it right...
>>
>> What kind of clean up are you thinking of?  FYI. java.lang.ref.Cleaner API
>> may be interesting to you which you don't need to maintain your reference queue.
>>
>>
>> One relevant spec change that may be relevant: JDK-8071507 changed the
>> phantom reference be automatically-cleared reference as soft and weak
>> reference do in JDK 9.   Prior to JDK 9, the referent of a phantom
>> reference may be kept alive until the reference object is collected.  I
>> do think if there were no finalizer at all, it would need two separate
>> reachability states.
>>
>> Mandy
>