Visual Basic 2012 Programmer's Reference

GARBAGE COLLECTION

When a program starts, the system allocates a chunk of memory for the program called the managed heap. When it allocates data for reference types (class objects), Visual Basic uses memory from this heap. (For more information about the stack and heap and their relative performance, see the section “Heap and Stack Performance” earlier in this chapter.)

When the program no longer needs to use a reference object, Visual Basic does not mark the heap memory as free for later use. If you set a reference variable to Nothing so that no variable points to the object, the object’s memory is no longer available to the program, but Visual Basic does not reuse the object’s heap memory, at least not right away.

The optimizing engine of the garbage collector (GC) determines when it needs to clean up the heap. If the program allocates and frees many reference objects, a lot of the heap may be full of memory that is no longer used. In that case, the garbage collector will decide to clean house.

When it runs, the garbage collector examines all the program’s reference variables, parameters that are object references, CPU registers, and other items that might point to heap objects. It uses those values to build a graph describing the heap memory that the program can still access. It then compacts the objects in the heap and updates the program’s references so they can find any moved items. The garbage collector then updates the heap itself so that the program can allocate memory ...