Why is infinite object creation not throwing OutOfMemoryError?

Question

Why am I not getting OutOfMemoryError with the below code?

class OutOfMemoryErrorTest{

    public static void main(String[] args){
        Object obj;

        while(true){
            obj = new Object();
        }
    }
}

I am running with Java 8.

Answer 1

The obj will be marked collectable after each loop, so it will be collected.

    while(true){
        Object obj = new Object(); //no further reference, so obj will be collected
    }

If you need to test OOM, you should save the reference of obj to a LinkedList.

    List refs = new LinkedList();
    while (true) {
        Object obj = new Object();
        refs.add(obj);
    }

Then you will get the OOM as you wanted. And you can use a smaller heap to reach OOM sooner.