Java: ill defined finalize method to create memory leak

Question

In java the garbage collect will invoke finalize method on an object x if there's no strong reference pointing to x and x is eligible for garbage collection. What if the finalize method never terminates, would this cause a memory leak?

public class X{
  protected void finalize(){
     while(true){}
  }
}

Answer 1

Yes it will, easy to test

public class X {

    protected void finalize() {
        while (true) {
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        while (true) {
            new X();
        }
    }
}

after some time I got

Exception: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError thrown from the UncaughtExceptionHandler in thread "main"

when I removed finalize() the test never stopped. Note that it takes a while before JVM goes OOM

BTW it's enough to run this test

public class X {
    byte[] a = new byte[100 * 1000 * 1000];

    protected void finalize() {
        System.out.println();
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        while (true) {
            new X();
        }
    }
}

to break GC

Exception in thread "main" 
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
    at test.X.<init>(X.java:5)
    at test.X.main(X.java:13)

comment out //System.out.println(); and it works non-stop