Java 的VARIABLE，reference存在stack, actual obj在HEAP

 have a question

What happend when I declare a variable inside a method, for example.

void myMethod() {
    Ship myShip = new Ship();
}

Where is allocated myShip reference, in stack or in the heap ?

I think in stack but I'm confused because I was reading in J2ME Game Programming book "Java classes are instantiated onto the Java heap"

All java clases ?

Thanks in advance




myShip is a reference to a Ship object, myShip is on the method call stack, which is referred to as "the stack". When a method is called a block of memory is pushed onto the top the stack, that memory block has space for all primitives (int, float, boolean etc) and object references of the method, which includes the method parameters. The heap is where the memory for the actual objects is allocated.

So myShip is on the stack and the Ship object is on the heap.

Note each thread has its own stack but share the heap.

Java really does things a bit differently. The reference is basically on the stack. The memory for the object is allocated in what passes for the heap. However, the implementation of allocable memory isn't quite like the way the heap is implemented in the C/C++ model.

When you create a new object like that, it effectively puts the name into the table of references for that scope. That's much like a pointer to an object in C++. When it goes out of scope, that reference is lost; the allocated memory is no longer referenced, and can be garbage-collected.