Java Question: Deallocate Temporary arrays of objects?

[Gadgetman_53]

Hi,

I am new to Java, but have been programming in C++ for a few years now. I am working on a project where I have to write a class to implement a gameboard. To do so, I'm using a 2D array of objects. I have a method that swaps two lines in the 12 X 12 matrix. What I have done is set up a new 1D array of the object type and temporarily stored one of the rows/columns to be swapped into this array, I then copy it's contents into the other row/column. My question is, when I am done with this tempArray of objects, must I deallocate it somehow, or does garbage collector take care of this??

Here is my code for this method:

public void swapLines(char xORy, int line1, int line2){

        Tile [] tempLine = new Tile [12];

        if(xORy == 'X'){

            for(int i = 0; i <= 11; i++){

                tempLine[i] = new Tile(board[i][line1].getLetter(), board[i][line1].getValue());

            }

           for(int i = 0; i <= 11; i++){

               board[i][line1] = board[i][line2];

           }

           for(int i = 0; i <= 11; i++){

               board[i][line2] = tempLine[i];

           }

        }

        if(xORy == 'Y'){

            for(int i = 0; i <= 11; i++){

                tempLine[i] = new Tile(board[line1][i].getLetter(), board[line1][i].getValue());

            }

            for(int i = 0; i <= 11; i++){

               board[line1][i] = board[line2][i];

           }

           for(int i = 0; i <= 11; i++){

               board[line2][i] = tempLine[i];

           }
        }
    }

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated (no pun intended).

Thanks,

Gadgetman_53

[AndreiDMS]

Garbage collector does this for you periodically or when it detects that they are no longer being used. Usually the reference to a variable is lost when the variable goes out of scope.

If you want to do it explicitly set the value of the variable to null(I guess).

[Gadgetman_53]

Thanks for the answer