java - What happens when assigned null to String object?

Question

I am trying to understand what happens to a string when null is assigned to it. So, I have a String str = new String("abc"); It uses some space in memory. When str is assigned null, i.e str = null, what happens to the memory that was used to create "abc" . Does it still use space in memory?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65907775/what-happens-when-assigned-null-to-string-object

Answer 1

Java is garbage collected. The memory allocated for the string will be freed at a feature point in time determined by the garbage collector. See Java Garbage Collection Basics for details.

Update: as commenters pointed out string interning might prevent the string from getting garbage collected. Details depend on many things like the scope of the reference, JVM and Java version.