Explicit nulling

Question

In what situations in java is explicit nulling useful. Does it in any way assist the garbage collector by making objects unreachable or something? Is it considered to be a g

Answer 1

From "Effective Java" : use it to eliminate obsolete object references. Otherwise it can lead to memory leaks which can be very hard to debug.

public Object pop(){
    if(size == 0)
        throw new EmptyStatckException();
    Object result = elements[--size];
    elements[size] = null; //Eliminate Object reference
    return result;
}