JavaScript's garbage collection mechanism automatically manages memory through a tag-clearing algorithm to reduce the risk of memory leakage. The engine traverses and marks the active object from the root object, and unmarked is treated as garbage and cleared. For example, when the object is no longer referenced (such as setting the variable to null), it will be released in the next round of recycling. Common causes of memory leaks include: ① Uncleared timers or event listeners; ② References to external variables in closures; ③ Global variables continue to hold a large amount of data. The V8 engine optimizes recycling efficiency through strategies such as generational recycling, incremental marking, parallel/concurrent recycling, and reduces the main thread blocking time. During development, unnecessary global references should be avoided and object associations should be promptly decorated to improve performance and stability.
JavaScript's garbage collection mechanism is actually quite "invisible". It automatically helps you clean up memory that is no longer used, and you don't need to manually release it. But understanding how it works can help you write more efficient and memory leak code.
Basic principle: Mark-and-Sweep
Modern JavaScript engines mainly use the "mark-clear" algorithm to manage memory. Simply put, the engine will start from the root object (such as the global object window
or global
), iterate through all accessible objects and mark them as "active". The rest of the unmarked ones are garbage and will be removed.
For example:
let user = { name: "Alice" }; user = null; // At this time, the original object becomes recyclable
In the above code, we set user
to null
, which means that the object will no longer be referenced, and it will be cleared the next time the garbage collector runs.
FAQ: How does a memory leak occur?
Although there is automatic garbage collection, if you accidentally retain some unnecessary references, the memory will not be released, which is called memory leak.
Several common situations include:
- Forgot to clear the timer or event listener that is no longer used
- Referring external variables in closures makes it impossible to release
- Use global variables to save a large amount of data, but never releases
for example:
function setup() { let data = new Array(1000000).fill('leak'); window.getData = function () { return data; }; } setup();
In this example, even if setup()
is executed, data
can still be accessed through getData()
, so it will not be recycled. If this kind of data is large or large, it can easily cause memory problems.
Optimization strategy for V8 engine
V8 is a JS engine used by Chrome and Node.js. It has made a lot of optimizations in garbage collection, such as:
- Generational recycling : divide objects into the new generation and the old generation, and adopt different recycling strategies respectively
- Incremental tagging : Avoid long-term pause of JS execution to mark
- Parallel/concurrency recycling : utilize multithreading to improve efficiency and reduce main thread blocking time
These optimizations make garbage collection more efficient and have a smaller impact on user experience.
Basically that's it. Although the garbage collection mechanism is usually invisible, it has a significant impact on performance and stability. When writing code, be careful not to hang global variables casually, dereference in time, and be careful to hold variables in the closure, which can avoid many pitfalls.
The above is the detailed content of How does garbage collection work in JavaScript?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!

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