Primitives are passed by value, and Objects are passed by “copy of a reference”. Specifically, when you pass an object (or array) you are (invisibly) passing a reference to that object, and it is possible to modify the contents of that object, but if you attempt to overwrite the reference it will not affect the … Read more
My understanding is that this is actually very simple: Javascript is always pass by value, but when a variable refers to an object (including arrays), the “value” is a reference to the object. Changing the value of a variable never changes the underlying primitive or object, it just points the variable to a new primitive … Read more
First and foremost, the “pass by value vs. pass by reference” distinction as defined in the CS theory is now obsolete because the technique originally defined as “pass by reference” has since fallen out of favor and is seldom used now.1 Newer languages2 tend to use a different (but similar) pair of techniques to achieve … Read more
Java is always pass-by-value. Unfortunately, when we deal with objects we are really dealing with object-handles called references which are passed-by-value as well. This terminology and semantics easily confuse many beginners. It goes like this: public static void main(String[] args) { Dog aDog = new Dog(“Max”); Dog oldDog = aDog; // we pass the object … Read more