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Noun: garbage collector
  1. [N. Amer] Someone employed to collect and dispose of refuse
    "The garbage collector arrived early every Tuesday to collect the neighbourhood's trash";
    - garbage carter [N. Amer], garbage hauler [N. Amer], refuse collector, garbo [Austral, informal]
     
  2. (computing) a program subsystem that automatically frees memory that is no longer used or referenced by the program
    "The garbage collector helps prevent memory leaks in Java programs"

Derived forms: garbage collectors

Type of: hauler [N. Amer], haulier [Brit]

Encyclopedia: Garbage collector