How does memory management work in Python and what is a garbage collector?

In Python, memory management is automatic with the help of a built-in garbage collector. The main mechanisms are:

• Reference counting: each object keeps track of the number of references to itself. When the count reaches zero, the object is immediately deleted.
• Cyclic reference collector: for objects that reference each other and cannot be deleted by reference counting, an additional cycle detection and cleanup algorithm is used.

The garbage collector runs periodically to free memory occupied by unused objects. This allows developers not to worry about manual memory management, but it can sometimes cause pauses in program execution.

Example: if two objects reference each other but are not used elsewhere, reference counting will not free them, but the garbage collector will detect and delete these cycles.