title: Circular References in Java
body: <p>Given an aggregation of class instances which refer to each other in a complex, circular, fashion: is it possible that the garbage collector may not be able to free these objects?</p>
  
  <p>I vaguely recall this being an issue in the JVM in the past, but I <em>thought</em> this was resolved years ago.  yet, some investigation in jhat has revealed a circular reference being the reason for a memory leak that I am now faced with.</p>
  
  <p><em>Note: I have always been under the impression that the JVM was capable of resolving circular references and freeing such "islands of garbage" from memory.  However, I am posing this question just to see if anyone has found any exceptions.</em> </p>