When does garbage collection happen to static members?

[Adam Smith]

Hi. I have a static arraylist in a class which is populated during
the class's static constructor.

Will this arraylist or the class objects allocated on it ever be
garbage collected if I don't access it for a few hours? Other posts
to this board seem to point to no.

Thanks in advance.

Adam Smith

 

[Greg Ewing [MVP]]

Adam, static objects are considered to be a part of the root of your
application and therefore not garbage collected.

For more information read "The Garbage Collection Algorithm" in :
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/1100/GCI/default.aspx

 

[Adam Smith]

Yes. My arraylist is static, but the objects within it are not. (But
they are allocated in the static constructor) Are they garbage
collected?

Thanks again.

Adam Smith

 

[Austin Ehlers]

Only if they are individually null'ed, like:

myArrayList[10]=null;

(assuming the object myArrayList[10] points to has no other
references). GC will occur.

Austin Ehlers