Does garbage collection guarantee that a program will not run out of memory?

No, Garbage collection does not guarantee that a program will not run out of memory.

The primary objective of garbage collection (GC) in Java is to discern and eliminate objects that have ceased to be necessary within a program, thereby facilitating the reclamation and reuse of their associated resources. An object becomes eligible for garbage collection when it can no longer be accessed or reached by the program in which it was utilized.

In situations where the available memory is inadequate to accommodate the allocation of a new object, the garbage collector endeavors to recover as much memory as possible by releasing the memory occupied by objects that no longer possess any references. However, if the memory deficit persists despite these efforts, an 'out of memory' exception will be thrown, indicating the unavailability of sufficient memory resources.

Developers have the potential to inadvertently generate objects that remain in memory indefinitely, resulting in a gradual accumulation of memory consumption until the entire heap is depleted. It falls upon the developer's shoulders to ensure that objects no longer required are no longer referenced within the application.

By doing so, the garbage collector can effectively execute its role of reclaiming memory occupied by these unreferenced objects. In summary, while garbage collection (GC) assumes the responsibility of managing memory to a large extent and endeavors to make memory accessible for the application, it cannot provide an absolute guarantee of availability.