Can scripting language and interpreted language force garbage collection?

Question

In javascript, you can't force garbage collection to happen, instead you have to wait for the interpreter to automatically collect it.

Does this behaviour exist in interpreted languages like Python and Java as well?

At least in Lua, one can call `collectgarbage()` manually. – Yu Hao Nov 28 '13 at 08:52 — Yu Hao, Nov 28 '13 at 08:52
@YuHao Java is an interpreted language. – tyteen4a03 Nov 28 '13 at 08:52 — tyteen4a03, Nov 28 '13 at 08:52

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

I don't know about Java, but in Python you can manually force a garbage collection cycle to happen with gc.collect().

From the docs:

gc.collect([generation])

With no arguments, run a full collection. The optional argument generation may be an integer specifying which generation to collect (from 0 to 2). A ValueError is raised if the generation number is invalid. The number of unreachable objects found is returned.

You can read this SO answer for a reference on how garbage collection works in Python.

Can scripting language and interpreted language force garbage collection?

1 Answers1