In Listing 16.9, we create a variable options:
BitmapFactory.Options options = new BitmapFactory.Options();
then later, we point options at some new space:
options = new BitmapFactory.Options();
Is the space taken up by the original new BitmapFactory.Options(); now lost since nothing is pointing to it, or does Java automatically handle this?
Java will handle that for you. In java, the garbage collector runs periodically looking for chunks of memory that nothing has a reference to anymore. When it finds one, the garbage collector frees up that memory.
Once we replace the original options variable with a new one, we no longer have a reference to that first piece of memory and it will be automatically cleaned up.
can you still assign a null value to the variable to force garbage collection
ex. options = null ?
Assigning it to null won’t make a significant difference over freeing up references to the object. Manually setting variables to null is going to complicate your code without adding any benefit.