Net Garbage Collector 101

.NET FundamentalsGarbage Collection

Woody Pewittwoody@pewitt.org

Why Multi Generational?

Concurrent/Synchronousaka workstation and server

• Concurrent garbage collection is used in desktop applications

• Synchronous is used in server applications such as ASP.NET by default.

• Concurrent mode, .NET will try to avoid stopping the running program while a collection is in progress

• In synchronous mode, .NET will suspend the running application while the garbage collector is running

The good

• Cost of doing an allocation is extremely low• You don’t manage memory or pointers!

Issues to watch for

• Too Many Allocations– String.Split– String concatenation

• Too-Large Allocations• Too Many Pointers– Transitory objects with a lot of interdependencies

• Too Many Roots• Too Many Almost-Long-Life Objects

What's wrong with this?

string x = ""; for (int y = 0; y < 100; y++) { x += this.randomString(); }

Strings are immutable objects in the CLR!

Use StringBuilder!

string x = "";StringBuilder y = new StringBuilder();

for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++){ y.Append(this.randomString());}

x = y.ToString();

Finalization

• Objects that need finalization live longer than objects that do not

• Objects that need finalization cause collateral damage

• Objects needing finalization create work for the finalizer thread

IDisposable and Dispose

• This interface provides an alternative method for reclaiming resources whose lifetime is well known to the programmer

class X: Idisposable {public X() { //initialize resources}~X() { //release resources }public void Dispose() { // this is the same as calling ~X() Finalize(); // no need to finalize later System.GC.SuppressFinalize(this); } }

Weak References

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.weakreference.aspx

Induced Collections

• GC.Collect – Just don’t do it!

• Use GCCollectionMode if you must!– Default– Forced– Optimized

Consider

• Allocate all of the memory to be used with a given data structure at the same time

• Remove temporary allocations that can be avoided

• Minimize the number of times object pointers get written

• Reduce the density of pointers in your data structures.

• Make limited use of finalizers!