Why doesn't .NET have a SoftReference as well as a WeakReference, like Java?

Question

I really love WeakReference's. But I wish there was a way to tell the CLR how much (say, on a scale of 1 to 5) how weak you consider the reference to be. That would be brilliant.

Java has SoftReference, WeakReference and I believe also a third type called a "phantom reference". That's 3 levels right there which the GC has a different behaviour algorithm for when deciding if that object gets the chop.

I am thinking of subclassing .NET's WeakReference (luckily and slightly bizzarely it isn't sealed) to make a pseudo-SoftReference that is based on a expiration timer or something.

Answer 1

Could you elaborate on what different levels you would like?

Answer 2

My guess as to why this isn't there already would be simplicity. Most people, I think, would call it a virtue that there is only one type of reference, not four.

Answer 3

Looking for the 'trackResurrection' option passed to the constructor perhaps?

The GC class also offers some assistance.

Answer 4

Maybe there should be an property where you can specify which Generation that the object >= before it is collected. So if you specify 1 then it is the weakest possible reference. But if you specify 3 then it would need to survive at least 3 prior collections before it can be considered for collection itself.

I thought the track ressurection flag was no good for this because by that time the object has already been finalized? May be wrong though...

(PS: I am the OP, just signed up. PITA that it doesn't inherit your history from "unregistered" accounts.)

Answer 5

Having a WeakReference with varying levels of weakness (priority) sounds nice, but also might make the GC's job harder, not easier. (I've no idea on the GC internals, but) I would assume there some sort of additional access statistics that are kept for WeakReference objects so that the GC can clean them up efficiently (e.g. it might get rid of the least-used items first).

More than likely the added complexity wouldn't make anything any more efficient because the most efficient way is to get rid of infrequently used WeakReferences first. If you could assign a priority, how would you do it? This smells like a premature optimization: the programmer doesn't really know most of the time and is guessing; the result is a slower GC collection cycle that is probably reclaiming the wrong objects.

It begs the question though, that if you care about the WeakReference.Target object being reclaimed, is it really a good use of WeakReference?

It's like a cache. You shove stuff into the cache and ask the cache to make it stale after x minutes, but most caches never guarantee to keep it around at all. It just guarantees that if it does, it will expire it according to the policy requested.

Answer 6

Don't know why .NET does not have Softreferences. BUT in Java Softreferences are IMHO overused. The reason is tha at least in an application server you would want to be able to influence per application how long your Softreferenzen live. That's currently not possible in Java.

Answer 7

Don't forget that you also have your standard references (the ones that you use on a daily basis). This gives you one more level.

WeakReferences should be used when you don't really care if the object goes away, while SoftReferences really only should be used when you would use a normal reference, but you would rather your object be cleared then for you to run out of memory. I'm not sure on the specifics, but I suspect that the GC normally traces through SoftReferences but not WeakReferences when determining which objects are live, but when running low on memory will also skip the SoftReferences.

My guess is that the .Net designers felt that the difference was confusing to most people and or that SoftReferences add more complexity than they really wanted and so decided to leave them out.

As a side note, AFAIK PhantomReferences are mostly designed for internal use by the virtual machine and are not intended for actual client use.

Answer 8

Maybe the ASP.NET Cache class (System.Web.Caching.Cache) might help achieve what you want? It automatically remove objects if memory gets low:

• ASP.NET Caching Overview

Here's an article that shows how to use the Cache class in a windows forms application.

quoted from: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/632039/equivalent-to-softreference-in-net/632066#632066