1.Previous
3.Next

no longer usable by a program by maintaining a counter for how many independent pointers point to the memory. Whenever a new pointer points to a piece of memory, the programmer is supposed to increase the counter. When the pointer changes where it points, or when the pointer is no longer pointing to any area or has itself been freed, the counter should decrease. When the counter drops to zero, the memory should be considered unused and freed. Some reference counting systems require programmer involvement

1.Previous
3.Next