Editing Garbage collection (computer science) (section)

=== Advantages ===
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GC frees the programmer from manually de-allocating memory. This helps avoid some kinds of [[bug (software)|error]]s:<ref>{{Cite web |title=Garbage Collection |url=https://rebelsky.cs.grinnell.edu/Courses/CS302/99S/Presentations/GC/ |access-date=2024-01-13 |website=rebelsky.cs.grinnell.edu}}</ref>

* ''[[Dangling pointer]]s'', which occur when a piece of memory is freed while there are still [[pointer (computer programming)|pointer]]s to it, and one of those pointers is [[dereference operator|dereferenced]]. By then the memory may have been reassigned to another use, with unpredictable results.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Heller |first=Martin |date=2023-02-03 |title=What is garbage collection? Automated memory management for your programs |url=https://www.infoworld.com/article/3685493/what-is-garbage-collection-automated-memory-management-for-your-programs.html |access-date=2024-06-21 |website=InfoWorld |language=en}}</ref>
* ''Double free bugs'', which occur when the program tries to free a region of memory that has already been freed, and perhaps already been allocated again.
* Certain kinds of ''[[memory leak]]s'', in which a program fails to free memory occupied by objects that have become [[unreachable]], which can lead to memory exhaustion.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/garbage-collection/fundamentals|title=Fundamentals of garbage collection {{!}} Microsoft Learn|author=[[Microsoft]]|date=28 February 2023 |access-date=2023-03-29}}</ref>