Hi

I'm doing something with Sets and Maps that I think is valid code but
I'd like an outside opinion on whether or not I am creating a memory
leak with the temporary HashMap that I am using.

My uncertainty is with the following lines in my example (the last
three of the method) :

result = new HashSet();
result.addAll(myMap.values());
return result;

My example :
~~~~~~~~~~

I have a method that does quite a bit of processing and I use a map to
do lookups for already processed data. The method must return a Set
instance.

private static final Set getSomeDataAndUpdate(String [] mapIds){

  Set result = null;
  // map that is used to simplify lookups
  Map<String, String> myMap = new HashMap();

  ...
  Some JDBC code which will populate entries in the the map
  with a database key (as the map key)
  and a string (as the map value for the key)
  ...

  // by this stage the map is populated - process the
  // supplied String array parameter
  // and update the value in the map if the key exists
  for (String mapId : mapIds){

     if (myMap.containsKey(mapId)){

      // update the data - the text is not important
       myMap.put(mapId,"found you");

     }

  }

  result = new HashSet();              // the result I want
  result.addAll(myMap.values());    // dont want the map keys
  return result;
}

Should I be emptying the HashMap and then setting it to null or will
the garbage collector handle this?

Thanks
Chris