When does garbage collection happen for a class with static data

garbage-collection, java, static

Solution

you can try to make it final, and recompile the code in order to see if some other class CHANGES the reference to null:

public class Global {

    public final static List<String> data = new ArrayList<String>();

}

this allow to write:

Global.data.add("foo");

but not:

Global.data = null;

Problem

I want to make some data easily available throughout my application. I have a few variables in a class with static data, which get written to and read from at several different points. This worked fine for a while, but now at one point where I expect to be able to retrieve an ArrayList all I get is "null". I am wondering if the static class has been sent to the "garbage collector". Not sure what's going on, if you can help that would be much appreciated.

Original source

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