Force Garbage Collection in AS3?

Question

Is it possible to programmatically force a full garbage collection run in ActionScript 3.0?

Let's say I've created a bunch of Display objects with eventListeners and some of the DO's have been removed, some of the eventListeners have been triggered and removed etc... Is there a way to force garbage collection to run and collect everything that is available to be collected?

Answer 1

try {
    new LocalConnection().connect('foo');
    new LocalConnection().connect('foo');
} catch (e:*){
    trace("Forcing Garbage Collection :"+e.toString());
}

Answer 2

As others said: do not try to GC manually, there are hacks but it's not safe.

You should try recycling objects when you can - you'll save a lot of memory.

This can be applied for instance to BitmapDatas (clear and reuse), particles (remove from display and reuse).