A method of dangling reference detection and garbage collection of VHDL objects within a program includes the steps of providing an Access Value having an Object Reference pointing to an Allocated Object and having and an Access Count pointer pointing to an integer object named Access Count which models a shared access count for the access values. The method sets the Object Reference and the Access Count pointer to null when constructing a new access value and enables an assignment of a negative Access Count to the shared access count when de-allocating a pointer to the Allocated Object. The method also maintains an exact count of a number of pointers pointing to the Allocated Object.