Enthuware

Thus, in the next GC cycle when the GC tries to reclaim the memory of FinalizeTest object, it sees that it has a valid reference and this ignores the object.

Is this really true for all VMs using any GC-algorithm?

If there is a live reference to any object, the GC will not destroy that object. This is guaranteed to be true for any GC algorithm. So if you were to create such a reference in finalize method, the object will not be destroyed.

HTH,
Paul.

My interpretation was that it will be eligible for GC because even though the List contains a reference, and FinalizeTest has a reference to Resurrecter, nothing points to FinalizeTest, so its composite objects are eligible for GC.

From Mughal, p391: "...we can conclude that if a composite object becomes unreachable, its constituent objects also become unreachable, barring any reachable references to the constituent objects."

However, I do see that there are pointers to FinalizeTest in the List. Is this not a similar situation where 2 objects that point to each other are eligible for GC?

The difference is that in this case the list is static.