Question

I’ve been told that when you pass an Object to a method,
it’s passed “by value”. I made a little test to examine it:

Point p = new Point(1, 1);
Circle c = new Circle(p);
p.x = 999;
Console.WriteLine(c.p.x);

the code above prints “999”, but I thought the object is copied to the method
I’ve been told that if you’re not using “ref” (or “out”) the method get the value
of the object.

can someone make it clear to me?
thanks,
socksocket

Answer 1

Assuming Point is declared as class, not p itself is copied, the reference to p is copied. So it’s still pass by value. You pass the value of a reference.

When saying Point p = new Point(1, 1); (and if point is a reference type), one might think it is a variable containing a Point, but in fact it is a variable containing a reference to a Point that is stored somewhere else.