Suppose that you create a couple of new objects and refer to them using referenced-typed variables, as follows:
1 2 | Dog myDog = new Dog("Kirby", 15);Dog yourDog = new Dog("Bowser", 3); |
You now have two variables of type Dog, each referring to an instance of a Dog object. The Dog objects exist on the managed heap.
Suppose that you now change the yourDog variable to also reference the “Kirby” dog, as follows:
1 | yourDog = myDog; |
The managed heap still contains the two original Dog objects. But notice that the “Bowser” dog is no longer currently referenced by any reference-typed variables. Bowser is no longer reachable from any of the reference-typed variables, but this Dog object has not yet been destructed, or its memory reclaimed.
