The management interface for the garbage collection of the Java virtual machine. Garbage collection is the process that the Java virtual machine uses to find and reclaim unreachable objects to free up memory space. A garbage collector is one type of memory manager .

A Java virtual machine may have one or more instances of the implementation class of this interface. An instance implementing this interface is an MXBean that can be obtained by calling the ManagementFactory#getGarbageCollectorMXBeans method or from the platform MBeanServer method.

The ObjectName for uniquely identifying the MXBean for a garbage collector within an MBeanServer is:

java.lang:type=GarbageCollector ,name=collector's name
A platform usually includes additional platform-dependent information specific to a garbage collection algorithm for monitoring.
@author
Mandy Chung
@version
1.9, 04/20/04
@since
1.5
Returns the total number of collections that have occurred. This method returns -1 if the collection count is undefined for this collector.
Return
the total number of collections that have occurred.
Returns the approximate accumulated collection elapsed time in milliseconds. This method returns -1 if the collection elapsed time is undefined for this collector.

The Java virtual machine implementation may use a high resolution timer to measure the elapsed time. This method may return the same value even if the collection count has been incremented if the collection elapsed time is very short.

Return
the approximate accumulated collection elapsed time in milliseconds.
Returns the name of memory pools that this memory manager manages.
Return
an array of String objects, each is the name of a memory pool that this memory manager manages.
Returns the name representing this memory manager.
Return
the name of this memory manager.
Tests if this memory manager is valid in the Java virtual machine. A memory manager becomes invalid once the Java virtual machine removes it from the memory system.
Return
true if the memory manager is valid in the Java virtual machine; false otherwise.