Is it possible to accidentally delete or lose a reference to an object stored in a HashMap?

In Java, if an object is stored in a HashMap, a reference to it is stored inside the map itself. You can lose or accidentally delete this reference if:

• You explicitly call the remove(key) method, which deletes the key-value pair.
• You overwrite the value for a key with a new object using put(key, newValue).

However, if you simply lose the reference to the HashMap itself or to the key, but the map still exists and contains the object, then the object will not be garbage collected because there is still a reference to it from the HashMap.

Therefore, it is impossible to accidentally lose the reference to an object inside a HashMap without explicitly deleting or modifying the contents of the map. However, if the map itself becomes inaccessible (for example, it goes out of scope and nothing references it), then the objects inside it can be garbage collected.