How to find the number of objects in the heap

Question

How can I find the number of live objects on the heap in Java program?

Answer 1

There is a hack you can try:

• create your own java.lang.Object (copy the original source)
• count the created objects in the constructor (not called for arrays)
• add the path to your classfile to the boot classpath

see this (old) article for a sample.

Probably there are better ways to do it using JPDA or JMX, but I've not found how...