Patent ID: 8056055

Claim:
A computer readable medium holding computer-executable instructions that, when executed on a processor, control disposition of a candidate object in an object-oriented environment, the instructions comprising instructions for: representing a plurality of objects in the object-oriented environment in a directed graph, the plurality of objects including the candidate object; determining a cyclic value indicative of a number of cyclic paths in the directed graph that include the candidate object, wherein a cyclic path is a strongly connected component such that no node within the strongly connected component has an external reference and no node within the strongly connected component is reachable from an object having an external reference; controlling disposition of the candidate object using the cyclic value; storing the cyclic value for the candidate object; identifying whether a reference to the candidate object has been created or destroyed and whether a path that includes the candidate object has been altered since the storing of the cyclic value; and subsequently controlling disposition of the candidate object based on the identifying.