Garbage collection is a mechanism for automatically freeing up memory that is no longer being used by a program. It is a common feature of modern programming languages and runtime environments, including Python, Java, and the .NET framework.
When a program creates an object in memory, it is responsible for later freeing up that memory when it is no longer needed. This is typically done by calling a special function or method to deallocate the object. However, it is easy for a programmer to forget to do this, or to do it at the wrong time, which can lead to a type of error called a “memory leak”.
To help prevent these kinds of errors, many programming languages and runtime environments include a garbage collector that automatically detects when an object is no longer being used and frees up the associated memory. This can greatly simplify the task of writing correct, efficient code, especially in large programs.