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Even when function arguments are passed using "call by value" semantics (which is always the case in Java, and is the case by default in C#), a value of a reference type is intrinsically a reference; so if a parameter belongs to a reference type, the resulting behavior bears some resemblance to "call by reference" semantics.
In a programming language, an evaluation strategy is a set of rules for evaluating expressions. [1] The term is often used to refer to the more specific notion of a parameter-passing strategy [2] that defines the kind of value that is passed to the function for each parameter (the binding strategy) [3] and whether to evaluate the parameters of a function call, and if so in what order (the ...
The specification for pass-by-reference or pass-by-value would be made in the function declaration and/or definition. Parameters appear in procedure definitions; arguments appear in procedure calls. In the function definition f(x) = x*x the variable x is a parameter; in the function call f(2) the value 2 is the argument of the function. Loosely ...
VB supports parameter passing conventions by value and by reference via the keywords ByVal and ByRef, respectively. Unless ByRef is specified, an argument is passed ByVal. Therefore, ByVal is rarely explicitly specified. For a simple type like a number these conventions are relatively clear.
A reference is an abstract data type and may be implemented in many ways. Typically, a reference refers to data stored in memory on a given system, and its internal value is the memory address of the data, i.e. a reference is implemented as a pointer. For this reason a reference is often said to "point to" the data.
In the C++ programming language, a reference is a simple reference datatype that is less powerful but safer than the pointer type inherited from C.The name C++ reference may cause confusion, as in computer science a reference is a general concept datatype, with pointers and C++ references being specific reference datatype implementations.
Some people (including Guido van Rossum himself) have called this parameter-passing scheme "call by object reference". An object reference means a name, and the passed reference is an "alias", i.e. a copy of the reference to the same object, just as in C/C++. The object's value may be changed in the called function with the "alias", for example:
r0 to r3: Argument values passed to a subroutine and results returned from a subroutine. If the type of value returned is too large to fit in r0 to r3, or whose size cannot be determined statically at compile time, then the caller must allocate space for that value at run time, and pass a pointer to that space in r0.