Memory Management and the Garbage Collector

[wey97]

A garbage collector, in theory, can reclaim memory right after it goes out of scope.

Forms, however, seem to be a rare exception where they can exist beyond the scope they're created in.

For example, in an application you have two simple forms, Form1 and Form2.

A button click on Form1 creates an instance of Form2 and displays the form.

public partial class Form1 : Form
{
	private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
	{
		Form2 frm2 = new Form2();
		frm2.Show();

	}
}

After button1_Click, frm2's scope is over, yet it still exists in memory and apparently hasn't been GCed yet.

How can this be? Does the GC make exceptions in special cases?