More about Classes and Methods - 15

Hi,

Initially i typed the methods as :

public static void passByValue(Car car)
{
car.Make = "BMW";
}
public static void passByReference(ref Car car)
{
car.Make = "BMW";
}

and I expected the first method not to make any changes to myNewCar.Make(still remain as toyota) and the second one to make myNewCar.Make as BMW, however both changed to BMW. How did that happen( I thought it was very similar to your integer example).

This is because all objects are passed by reference. Putting the ref keyword or not makes no difference in case of objects. The only reason one might consider putting in a 'ref' next to a object would be to let people know that this method might change your object. Hope that makes sense.

"This is because all objects are passed by reference. Putting the ref keyword or not makes no difference in case of objects. The only reason one might consider putting in a 'ref' next to a object would be to let people know that this method might change your object. Hope that makes sense."

Sorry I stand corrected. In case of Objects. When you do NOT use the 'ref' keyword, you pass a copy of the reference(a copy of the location of the car object in memory). When you do use the 'ref' keyword you passing a reference to the object passed in. The reason why both your functions change your car make, is because, you are making changes to the same object in memory. If you wanted a similar effect you get with value types like integer, you would have to first 'new' up the object in your passByValue method.

When 'value types' like integer, bool, float etc, are passed by VALUE they create a copy of the variable(i.e a NEW memory location). Thus it does not affect the original value of the 'value type' passed in. ok.. that was quite a mouthful :) Hope it helps.