Question

Why does the following code return 100 100 1 1 1 and not 100 1 1 1 1 ?

public class Hotel {
private int roomNr;

public Hotel(int roomNr) {
    this.roomNr = roomNr;
}

public int getRoomNr() {
    return this.roomNr;
}

static Hotel doStuff(Hotel hotel) {
    hotel = new Hotel(1);
    return hotel;
}

public static void main(String args[]) {
    Hotel h1 = new Hotel(100);
    System.out.print(h1.getRoomNr() + " ");
    Hotel h2 = doStuff(h1);
    System.out.print(h1.getRoomNr() + " ");
    System.out.print(h2.getRoomNr() + " ");
    h1 = doStuff(h2);
    System.out.print(h1.getRoomNr() + " ");
    System.out.print(h2.getRoomNr() + " ");
}
}

Why does it appear to pass Hotel by-value to doStuff() ?

Answer 1

It does exactly what you told it to do 🙂

Hotel h1 = new Hotel(100);
System.out.print(h1.getRoomNr() + " "); // 100
Hotel h2 = doStuff(h1);
System.out.print(h1.getRoomNr() + " "); // 100 - h1 is not changed, h2 is a distinct new object
System.out.print(h2.getRoomNr() + " "); // 1
h1 = doStuff(h2);
System.out.print(h1.getRoomNr() + " "); // 1 - h1 is now changed, h2 not
System.out.print(h2.getRoomNr() + " "); // 1

As others noted (and is explained very clearly in this article), Java passes by value. In this case, it passes a copy of the reference h1 to doStuff. There the copy gets overwritten with a new reference (which is then returned and assigned to h2), but the original value of h1 is not affected: it still references the first Hotel object with a room number of 100.