class MyObject {
    Test main;

    public MyObject(Test t) {    
        main = t; 
    }

    protected void finalize() {
        main.ref = this; // let instance become reachable again
        System.out.println("This is finalize"); //test finalize run only once
    }
}

class Test {
    MyObject ref;

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Test test = new Test();
        test.ref = new MyObject(test);
        test.ref = null; //MyObject become unreachable，finalize will be invoked
        System.gc(); 
        if (test.ref != null) System.out.println("MyObject still alive!");  
    }
}

====================================

结果:

This is finalize

MyObject still alive!

=====================================

所以你可以在finalize方法中使一个不可达的实例可达。

您可以将它用作持有外部资源(套接字、文件等)的对象的支持。实现close()方法和需要调用它的文档。

如果检测到close()没有执行，则实现finalize()来执行close()处理。可能会将一些东西转储到stderr，以指出您正在清理有错误的调用者。

它在异常/有bug的情况下提供了额外的安全性。并不是每个调用者每次都会执行正确的try {} finally{}。不幸的是，但在大多数环境中都是如此。

我同意很少有人需要它。正如评论者指出的那样，它带来了GC开销。只有当你在一个长期运行的应用程序中需要“皮带和背带裤”的安全性时才使用。

我看到从Java 9开始，Object.finalize()已弃用!它们将我们指向java.lang.ref.Cleaner和java.lang.ref.PhantomReference作为替代。

您不应该依赖finalize()来为您清理资源。Finalize()在类被垃圾回收之前不会运行。在使用完资源后显式地释放资源要好得多。

删除已经添加到全局/静态位置(不需要)的东西，并在对象被删除时需要删除，这是很方便的。例如:

    private void addGlobalClickListener() {
        weakAwtEventListener = new WeakAWTEventListener(this);

        Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().addAWTEventListener(weakAwtEventListener, AWTEvent.MOUSE_EVENT_MASK);
    }

    @Override
    protected void finalize() throws Throwable {
        super.finalize();

        if(weakAwtEventListener != null) {
            Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().removeAWTEventListener(weakAwtEventListener);
        }
    }

finalize()是对JVM的一个提示，建议在未指定的时间执行代码。当您希望代码莫名其妙地无法运行时，这是很好的方法。

在终结器中做任何重要的事情(基本上除了日志)在三种情况下也很好:

您希望打赌其他已完成的对象仍然处于程序其余部分认为有效的状态。 您希望向所有具有终结器的类的所有方法添加大量检查代码，以确保它们在终结后行为正确。 您希望意外地复活已完成的对象，并花费大量时间试图弄清楚为什么它们不起作用，和/或为什么它们在最终释放时没有最终完成。

If you think you need finalize(), sometimes what you really want is a phantom reference (which in the example given could hold a hard reference to a connection used by its referand, and close it after the phantom reference has been queued). This also has the property that it may mysteriously never run, but at least it can't call methods on or resurrect finalized objects. So it's just right for situations where you don't absolutely need to close that connection cleanly, but you'd quite like to, and the clients of your class can't or won't call close themselves (which is actually fair enough - what's the point of having a garbage collector at all if you design interfaces that require a specific action be taken prior to collection? That just puts us back in the days of malloc/free.)

Other times you need the resource you think you're managing to be more robust. For example, why do you need to close that connection? It must ultimately be based on some kind of I/O provided by the system (socket, file, whatever), so why can't you rely on the system to close it for you when the lowest level of resource is gced? If the server at the other end absolutely requires you to close the connection cleanly rather than just dropping the socket, then what's going to happen when someone trips over the power cable of the machine your code is running on, or the intervening network goes out?

免责声明:我以前在JVM实现上工作过。我讨厌终结者。

作为旁注:

覆盖finalize()的对象由垃圾回收器进行特殊处理。通常，在对象不再在作用域中后，在收集周期中立即销毁对象。但是，可终结对象被移到队列中，在队列中，独立的终结线程将耗尽队列并在每个对象上运行finalize()方法。一旦finalize()方法终止，对象就可以在下一个循环中进行垃圾收集了。

源代码:finalize()在java-9上已弃用