Re: Remove usage of finalizers ?

On 23 October 2013 12:29, Vitalii Tymchyshyn <vit(at)tym(dot)im> wrote:
> According to jdbc javadoc Statement.close simply releases resources without
> waiting for them to be closed automatically.

Interestingly, as recently as JDK 1.5 the javadoc for Statement said:
> Note: A Statement object is automatically closed when it is garbage
collected.
( http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/sql/Statement.html#close() )

That language seems to have been removed as of JDK 1.6, presumably
because relying on finalizers for cleanup of any real resource hasn't
been considered good practice since well before even then. And that
was in 2006.

I'm a little bit frightened now that there may be code out there
relying on this behaviour, bad practice though it may be. Once again
I'd like to know if this case makes any difference or not, given our
other use of PhantomReferences etc.

Tom