Comments on: Why is finalize method protected?

By: Neeraj

Neeraj — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:21:12 +0000

The artical is really very informatic, almost all te doubt have been clear. Thanks

By: rajiv

rajiv — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 02:04:00 +0000

Hello Tom,

If the finalize method of the super class were private, I agree that the compiler can not inject the regular virtual method invocation byte code: invokevirtual (ref-to-super-private-finalize-method. The compiler should instead inject: invokespecial (ref-to-super-private-finalize-method).

Why would the garbage collector have to call finalize on all the instances? It should be able to identify classes which define the method finalize and call it only on instances of those classes, as it does now.

By: Tom Hawtin

Tom Hawtin — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 00:20:00 +0000

private methods are not virtual, so there can be no overriding. I private methods were used for finalize, then the JVM would need to call finalize for each class of each object.

Using a guard object makes errors less likely.