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Soft references

If an object is not referenced by by a strong reference and there is at least one link to that object with a soft reference, then the object is a softly referenced object. Java provides us a class, which is a subclass of java.lang.ref.Reference, called SoftReference. Soft references are created by encapsulating the object which we want to refer, inside a SoftReference object. Some examples of soft references are shown below.






SoftReference sf = new SoftReference(new String(“abc”));






 





SoftReference sf = new SoftReference(new WeakReference(new String(“abc”)));







String s = new String(“abc”);


SoftReference sf = new SoftReference(s);

WeakReference wr = new WeakReference(s);

s = null;







In these examples we see another type of reference called a weak reference. The next section talks about weak references.



Note: This text was originally posted on my earlier blog at http://www.adaptivelearningonline.net
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