Lesson 70

Arguments By Reference
and By Value

PRESENTED BY

Keith Vassallo icemalta.com

Passing Primitives
- When passing arguments to methods, primitives are always passed by value.
- This means a copy of the primitive’s value is sent to the method, not the
primitive itself.
public class SomeClass {
public static void main(String[] args) {
int value = 5;
System.out.println("Value from main: " + value);
square(value);
System.out.println("Value from main after calling method: " + value);
}

public static void square(int value) {

value *= value;
System.out.println("Value from method: " + value);

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}
}

- The square method is working on a copy of value.

- The original primitive remains unchanged.
Passing Objects
- Objects are passed by reference.
- This means that when you pass an object to a method, a reference to the
original object is passed, and not a copy.

public class SomeClass {

public static void main(String[] args) {
Dog d = new Dog();
d.age = 4;
System.out.println("Value from main: " + d.age);
ageDog(d);
System.out.println("Value from main after calling method: " + d.age);
}

public static void ageDog(Dog someDog) {

someDog.age+=1;

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System.out.println("Value from method: " + someDog.age);
}
}
Passing Objects
- The original reference, d, points to a location in memory.
- When we pass d to a method, the method receives that memory location,
and assigns it a reference, someDog.
- Both references now point to the same memory location.

d someDog

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Terminology
- We use some terms to make a difference between the reference of an
object, and the object itself.

Dog d = new Dog();

Referant

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d Reference
Great work, you’ve completed this lesson!

Next up: Creating and Using

Constructors.

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