When does System.gc() do something?

Question

I know that garbage collection is automated in Java. But I understood that if you call System.gc() in your code that the JVM may or may not decide to perform ga

Answer 1

If you want to know if your System.gc() is called, you can with the new Java 7 update 4 get notification when the JVM performs Garbage Collection.

I am not 100% sure that the GarbageCollectorMXBean class was introduces in Java 7 update 4 though, because I couldn't find it in the release notes, but I found the information in the javaperformancetuning.com site