Difference between a soft reference and a weak reference in Java

Jeson84

Please explain me the difference between a soft reference and a weak reference in Java?

academics

Weak reference is a reference which is not strong enough to force an object to remain in memory. Weak references allow the programmer to leverage the garbage collector's ability to determine reachability. As a result of it, we dont want to do it ourself. Soft reference is similar to a weak reference, only exception being that it is less eager to throw away the object to which it refers