How does the garbage collector mechanism handle situations where objects form cyclic references?

In Python, the garbage collector uses a reference counting algorithm that automatically deletes objects that no longer have references. However, in the presence of cyclic references (when objects refer to each other, forming a cycle), reference counting cannot free memory because the references within the cycle are not nullified.

For such cases, Python has an additional module called "gc" (garbage collector), which periodically searches for cycles and deletes objects that are inaccessible from the program's root objects, despite the presence of cyclic references.

Thus, the garbage collection mechanism in Python combines reference counting and cycle detection for efficient memory management.