Question

I am trying to learn Java.

I have a custom class, which has attributes:

public class Person{
    private String name;
}

I have another class, where I do:

public class foo{
    private Person guy;

    public void setGuy(Person guy){
        this.guy = guy;
    }

    public Person getGuy(){
        return guy;
    }

    void someMethod(){
        Person anotherGuy = new Person();
        anotherGuy = getGuy();
    }
}

I am confused when I use the getGuy() method.
I thought that when I do this:

Person anotherGuy = new Person();
anotherGuy = getGuy();

I create a new object, which has the same value as guy. But it seems that anotherGuy is actually a pointer to guy.
So

Person anotherGuy = getGuy();

and the above 2 lines, do the exact same thing? I am confused. Also then how do I create a entirely new object in memory?

Answer 1

So

Person anotherGuy = getGuy();

and the above 2 lines, do the exact same thing?

No, the other version creates a new Person() object first and then discards it (which is just a waste of memory and processor cycles).