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Index › Programming Questions & Help › Syntax Questions › dump unwanted array

DeepSandwich YaBB Newbies Offline Posts: 3	dump unwanted array Aug 16th, 2009, 11:16am   if i have created an array that was being used at some point in my program, and now its not needed anymore, how can i dump it to free up memory?

blindfish God Member Offline Posts: 793	Re: dump unwanted array Reply #1 - Aug 16th, 2009, 11:57am   I'm sure this has been asked before.  IIRC the simplest option is something like: Code: int[] myArray = {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0}; void setup() { println(myArray.length); myArray = new int[0]; println(myArray.length); }
	Where is the what if the what is in why?

antiplastik YaBB Moderator Offline Posts: 699 France	Re: dump unwanted array Reply #2 - Aug 17th, 2009, 7:05am   Actually, you shouldn't care about freeing up the memory since this is Java's Garbage Collector purpose, but if you want to get rid of your array, just set it to null: Code: myArray = null;

PhiLho  YaBB Moderator Offline Posts: 4190 Near Paris (France)	Re: dump unwanted array Reply #3 - Aug 17th, 2009, 1:04pm   If the array is large and defined at top level, it can be interesting to hint the GC to collect it, assigning it to an empty array (as blindfish shows) with side advantage that code still works on it (.length and other) or to null (as you show, more radical...).