Question

I’ve got a question.

public class Jaba {

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        Integer i = new Integer(0);        
        new A(i);
        System.out.println(i);
        new B(i);
        System.out.println(i);
        int ii = 0;        
        new A(ii);
        System.out.println(ii);
        new B(ii);
        System.out.println(ii);    
    }

}

class A {

    public A(Integer i) { ++i; }

}

class B {

    public B(int i) { ++i; }

}

To my mind passing an int\Integer as Integer to a function and making ++ on that reference should change the underlying object, but the output is 0 in all the cases. Why is that?

Answer 1

As said in the other answers, Java does only call-by-value, and the ++ operator only effects a variable, not an object. If you want to simulate call-by-reference, you would need to pass a mutable object, like an array, and modify its elements.

The Java API has some specialized objects for this, like java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicInteger (which additionally also works over multiple threads), and org.omg.CORBA.IntHolder (used for call-by-reference for remote calls by the CORBA mechanism).

But you can also simply define your own mutable integer:

class MutableInteger {
    public int value;
}


class C {
   public C(int[] i) {
       ++i[0];
   }
}
class D {
   public D(MutableInteger i) {
       ++i.value;
   }
}
class E {
   public E(AtomicInteger i) {
       i.incrementAndGet();
   }
}
public class Jaba {
    public static void main(String args[]) {

        int[] iii = new int[]{ 0 };
        System.out.println(iii[0]);
        new C(iii);
        System.out.println(iii[0]);
        MutableInteger mi = new MutableInteger();
        System.out.println(mi.value);
        new D(mi);
        System.out.println(mi.value);
        MutableInteger ai = new AtomicInteger(0);
        System.out.println(ai);
        new E(ai);
        System.out.println(ai);
    }
}