Question about functions methods and variables

Question

Sorry but i couldn't figure out a better title.
When does a method alter the variables it gets directly and when does a method just alter a clone of the variables it gets?
How about a funcion?
for example:
public void (int i)
i = 4;
sometimes this method alters the integer which was given to it directly and sometimes it automatically creates a clone of the integer and alters that one. I just can't figure out why a method would do the first or the second.
Im trying to achieve the direct changeing of the given variable without creating an unessecary clone.
Thank You

Answer 1

Comp-Freak wrote:
Sorry but i couldn't figure out a better title.
When does a method alter the variables it gets directly and when does a method just alter a clone of the variables it gets?
How about a funcion?
for example:
public void (int i)
i = 4;
sometimes this method alters the integer which was given to it directly and sometimes it automatically creates a clone of the integer and alters that one. I just can't figure out why a method would do the first or the second.
Im trying to achieve the direct changeing of the given variable without creating an unessecary clone.
Thank YouThats quite all right about the title, trust me we get much worse titles on this forum. Most of the time to the effect of "Plz urgentlly!!!!111one"
In Java, all variables passed into methods are passed by value, which means that if I pass an int variable to a method, that methods argument will always be a seperate variable. There is no way to pass variables by reference so that you are altering the original variable you passed in.
It actually works the same way for reference variables that point to a particular object.
public Object o = new Object();
methodOne(o);
public void methodOne(Object oArg) {
  o == oArg;  //true
}It is essentially the same in this case, there are two seperate reference variables here, o and oArg is created once the method is called. There is only one Object created however and both reference variables point to it, so an == check will verify this that it is true.