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A soft reference is a reference that is garbage-collected less aggressively. The soft reference is one of the strengths or levels of 'non strong' reference defined in the Java programming language, the others being weak and phantom. In order from strongest to weakest, they are: strong, soft, weak, phantom.
The specification for pass-by-reference or pass-by-value would be made in the function declaration and/or definition. Parameters appear in procedure definitions; arguments appear in procedure calls. In the function definition f(x) = x*x the variable x is a parameter; in the function call f(2) the value 2 is the argument of the function. Loosely ...
Phantom reference are the weakest level of reference in Java; in order from strongest to weakest, they are: strong, soft, weak, phantom. An object is phantomly referenced after it has been finalized. In Java 8 and earlier versions, the reference needs to be cleared before the memory for a finalized referent can be reclaimed.
For a simple type like a number these conventions are relatively clear. Passing ByRef allows the procedure to modify the passed variable whereas passing ByVal does not. For an object, semantics can confuse programmers since an object is always treated as a reference. Passing an object ByVal copies the reference; not the state of the object. The ...
In computer programming, a reference is a value that enables a program to indirectly access a particular datum, such as a variable's value or a record, in the computer's memory or in some other storage device. The reference is said to refer to the datum, and accessing the datum is called dereferencing the reference. A reference is distinct from ...
Boxing's most prominent use is in Java where there is a distinction between reference and value types for reasons such as runtime efficiency and syntax and semantic issues. In Java, a LinkedList can only store values of type Object. One might desire to have a LinkedList of int, but this is not directly possible.
Many languages have explicit pointers or references. Reference types differ from these in that the entities they refer to are always accessed via references; for example, whereas in C++ it's possible to have either a std:: string and a std:: string *, where the former is a mutable string and the latter is an explicit pointer to a mutable string (unless it's a null pointer), in Java it is only ...
Message passing is a technique for invoking behavior (i.e., running a program) on a computer. In contrast to the traditional technique of calling a program by name, message passing uses an object model to distinguish the general function from the specific implementations. The invoking program sends a message and relies on the object to select ...