It depends on the garbage collected language, but I think in Java this 
should do it:

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/lang/ref/package-summary.html

in particular it looks like the WeakReference class would do what you want:

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/lang/ref/package-summary.html

And also:

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/WeakHashMap.html

I believe Python (and probably many other garbage collected languages as 
well) support similar functionality.

Post a reply to this message