Understanding java.lang.ref.Reference

Going from strongest to weakest, the different levels of reachability reflect the life cycle of an object. They are operationally defined as follows:

• An object is strongly reachable if it can be reached by some thread without traversing any reference objects. A newly-created object is strongly reachable by the thread that created it.
• An object is softly reachable if it is not strongly reachable but can be reached by traversing a soft reference.
• An object is weakly reachable if it is neither strongly nor softly reachable but can be reached by traversing a weak reference. When the weak references to a weakly-reachable object are cleared, the object becomes eligible for finalization.
• An object is phantom reachable if it is neither strongly, softly, nor weakly reachable, it has been finalized, and some phantom reference refers to it.
• Finally, an object is unreachable, and therefore eligible for reclamation, when it is not reachable in any of the above ways.