Comments on: How Java passes variables

By: syfran

syfran — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:38:17 +0000

Most java beginners don’t even know what it means to ‘pass by reference’. C++ programmers are going to be taught what the difference between them are from the start and have to learn to work with each one. A java beginner can safely ignore it in the beginning.

Just my opinion though :/

By: Ivana Fukalot

Ivana Fukalot — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 01:31:23 +0000

“The subject gets brought up mostly by C++ programmers transferring over to java.”

Don’t see why that would be the case. Java’s references are identical to pointers and are passed in the same exact way too – by value.

The only people that I see asking this question are beginners who still don’t know what a pointer is and how it works.

By: Paul-Benoit Larochelle

Paul-Benoit Larochelle — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:08:19 +0000

Good show
There are simpler way to explain that as Peter van der Linden did in his book “Just Java” but there is no error in the argumentation.
Basically you can do:

public void (MyObj x) {
x.abc = z;
}

but you cannot do

public void(MyObj x, MyObj y) {
MyObj temp = x;
x = y;
y = x;
}

that would require ** in C++

Good show