Question

I have a class called node. I want to store each nodes parent within each node like this:

public class Node
{
    public Node parent;
}

So say I assign parent to a node:

Node n = new Node();
Node n2 = new Node();
n.parent = n2;

If I change n2, will the parent variable of n change too?

Answer 1

No, the parent variable of n will not change: once a reference is copied, it gets a life of its own. If you change the Node pointed by n2, however, n‘s parent will see that change. For example, if you set n2.parent = n3, n.parent.parent will change to n3 as well.