Rcpp pass by reference vs. by value

They key is ‘proxy model’ — your xa really is the same memory location as your original object so you end up changing your original.

If you don’t want that, you should do one thing: (deep) copy using the clone() method, or maybe explicit creation of a new object into which the altered object gets written. Method two does not do that, you simply use two differently named variables which are both “pointers” (in the proxy model sense) to the original variable.

An additional complication, though, is in implicit cast and copy when you pass an int vector (from R) to a NumericVector type: that creates a copy, and then the original no longer gets altered.

Here is a more explicit example, similar to one I use in the tutorials or workshops:

library(inline)
f1 <- cxxfunction(signature(a="numeric"), plugin="Rcpp", body='
  Rcpp::NumericVector xa(a);
  int n = xa.size();
  for(int i=0; i < n; i++) {
    if(xa[i]<0) xa[i] = 0;
  }
  return xa;
')

f2 <- cxxfunction(signature(a="numeric"), plugin="Rcpp", body='
  Rcpp::NumericVector xa(a);
  int n = xa.size();
  Rcpp::NumericVector xr(a);            // still points to a
  for(int i=0; i < n; i++) {
    if(xr[i]<0) xr[i] = 0;
  }
  return xr;
')

p <- seq(-2,2)
print(class(p))
print(cbind(f1(p), p))
print(cbind(f2(p), p))
p <- as.numeric(seq(-2,2))
print(class(p))
print(cbind(f1(p), p))
print(cbind(f2(p), p))

and this is what I see:

edd@max:~/svn/rcpp/pkg$ r /tmp/ari.r
Loading required package: methods
[1] "integer"
        p
[1,] 0 -2
[2,] 0 -1
[3,] 0  0
[4,] 1  1
[5,] 2  2
        p
[1,] 0 -2
[2,] 0 -1
[3,] 0  0
[4,] 1  1
[5,] 2  2
[1] "numeric"
       p
[1,] 0 0
[2,] 0 0
[3,] 0 0
[4,] 1 1
[5,] 2 2
       p
[1,] 0 0
[2,] 0 0
[3,] 0 0
[4,] 1 1
[5,] 2 2
edd@max:~/svn/rcpp/pkg$

So it really matters whether you pass int-to-float or float-to-float.