Garbage Collection

The lives of the heap-based objects are not coupled to the scope of the individual stack-based variables that reference them. When the garbage collector runs, it will remove all those objects from the heap that are no longer referenced. As soon as the garbage collector has freed up all the objects it can, it compacts the heap by moving all remaining objects to form one contiguous block of memory. when the objects are moved about, all the references to those objects need to be updated with the correct new addresses, but the garbage collector handles that too.

Generally, the garbage collector runs when the .NET runtime determines that a garbage collection is required. You can force the garbage collector to run at a certain point in your code by calling System.GC.Collect().The System.GC class is a .NET class that represents the garbage collector, and the Collect() method initiates a garbage collection. The GC class is intended for rare situations in which you know that it's a good time to call the garbage collector; for example, if you have just dereferenced a large number of objects in your code. However, the logic of the garbage collector does not guarantee that all unreferenced objects will be removed from the heap in a single garbage collection pass.

Regards,
Praveen KVC
4 February 2010