What is a Garbage Collector in Python?

Garbage Collector (GC) in Python is an automatic memory management mechanism that frees memory occupied by objects that are no longer used by the program.

Python uses several methods for this:

1. Reference counting — the primary mechanism that tracks the number of references to an object. When the reference count of an object drops to zero, the memory is immediately freed.

2. Cycle detector — an additional mechanism to detect and remove cyclic references that cannot be freed by reference counting alone.

Thus, GC helps prevent memory leaks by automatically cleaning up unused objects, simplifying development and increasing program reliability.

Example of using the gc module:

import gc

# Enable or disable the cycle collector
gc.enable()
gc.disable()

# Force garbage collection
gc.collect()