Do instance methods strongly reference their objects?

Does myObject::someMethod strongly reference myObject? For some background, consider these two classes:

class TakesRunnable {
    private Runnable runner;

    TakesRunnable(Runnable runner) {
        this.runner = runner;
    }

    public void run() {
        runner.run();
    }
}

class Foo {
    public void runMe() {
        ...
    }
}

If I were to instantiate a Foo object, create new TakesRunnable(foo::runMe), and then lose my local reference to foo, would foo be garbage-collected underneath me or would my TakesRunnable object maintain a strong reference to it? I would imagine the latter but that’s because I spend a lot of time in Python.

>Solution :

Yes, instance-method references maintain a reference to the object they relate to.

So in your case, the object foo will remain uncollectable until that method reference goes out of scope.