According to this simple test program, the JVM will still make its call to finalize() even if you explicitly called it: private static class Blah { public void finalize() { System.out.println(“finalizing!”); } } private static void f() throws Throwable { Blah blah = new Blah(); blah.finalize(); } public static void main(String[] args) throws Throwable { … Read more
Destructor implicitly calls the Finalize method, they are technically the same. Dispose is available with objects that implement the IDisposable interface. You may see : Destructors C# – MSDN The destructor implicitly calls Finalize on the base class of the object. Example from the same link: class Car { ~Car() // destructor { // cleanup … Read more
Although the question was asking about the Object.finalize method, the subject really is about the finalization mechanism as a whole. This mechanism includes not only the surface API Object.finalize, but it also includes specifications of the programming language about the life cycle of objects, and practical impact on garbage collector implementations in JVMs. Much has … Read more
I answer your question with another question: Why finalize method shouldn’t be protected? In general, you should try to keep things as much private as possible. That’s what encapsulation is all about. Otherwise, you could make everything public. finalize can’t be private (since derived classes should be able to access it to be able to … Read more
Wikipedia has some good discussion on the difference between a finalizer and a destructor in the finalizer article. C# really doesn’t have a “true” destructor. The syntax resembles a C++ destructor, but it really is a finalizer. You wrote it correctly in the first part of your example: ~ClassName() { } The above is syntactic … Read more
You could use it as a backstop for an object holding an external resource (socket, file, etc). Implement a close() method and document that it needs to be called. Implement finalize() to do the close() processing if you detect it hasn’t been done. Maybe with something dumped to stderr to point out that you’re cleaning … Read more
Because Java is a garbage collected language you cannot predict when (or even if) an object will be destroyed. Hence there is no direct equivalent of a destructor. There is an inherited method called finalize, but this is called entirely at the discretion of the garbage collector. So for classes that need to explicitly tidy … Read more
A bit of conjecture here. It is possible for an object to be finalized and garbage collected even if there are references to it in local variables on the stack, and even if there is an active call to an instance method of that object on the stack! The requirement is that the object be … Read more
The finalize method is called when an object is about to get garbage collected. That can be at any time after it has become eligible for garbage collection. Note that it’s entirely possible that an object never gets garbage collected (and thus finalize is never called). This can happen when the object never becomes eligible … Read more