Java references

Question

Is there any way to find all references to an object (in Java)?

I have a cache of objects, and would like to periodically scan it to see if removing the object will cause it to be destroyed.

Answer 1

You might want to take a look at different reference types Java provides: strong, soft, weak, and phantom.

For cache you would normally wrap a reference into WeakReference or SoftReference and let the object be collected once there are no more strong references left.