I have a program with GUI with segment that can be large and contain a lot of objects. One of the features of my program is to "close" that segment and create a new one.
This whole segment is attached to the program by only one JPanel and an ArrayList. If I dispose of/set those two to null there should be no way to access the any of the JPanels childen (one of which are complex object extending GUI components, but also containing a lot of variables).
If I'm correct, all of JPanels childeren will be collected by garbage collector.
However, what happens to the children of the children? I have some "families" that go up to 5-6 "generations". Will they be deleted only upon GC's 5th (or 6th) pass, or will it detect the whole "family" as unacessible and collect it all at once (or upon it's first pass)?
EDIT: Another minor question: Is there a method for swing component that will remove all of it's children?