Is it possible to set an Object to be null from within itself?

Question

I know that this = null is illegal.

I\'m wondering if there\'s some other way to have an object clean itself up.

my desire is to be able to do some

Answer 1

No, because a is a reference (not an object as in this question's title) and no method can modify the value of a reference except the method in which it is defined (I assume from the code context that a is a local variable).

Since Java doesn't have pass-by-reference, what you ask cannot be done: there's no way to collect addresses-of references in order to manage the addresses pointed to. You might use a wrapper object, but not sure what'd be the point.