Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 5-8 illustrates the following about the values of the actual and formal parameters at
various stages in the execution of the method:
Before the method call, variables
A1
and
A2
, which will be used as the actual parameters,
are already on the stack.
By the beginning of the method, the names of the formal parameters have been set as
aliases for the actual parameters. Variables
A1
and
f1
refer to the same memory location,
and
A2
and
f2
refer to the same memory location.
At the end of the method, both
f2
and the field of the object of
f1
have been incremented
by 5.
After method execution, the names of the formal parameters are out of scope, but the
values of both
A1
, the reference type, and
A2
, the value type, have been changed by the
activity in the method.
Figure 5-8.
Reference parameter
