Thread: By reference vs value

It applies to all types. Built-in types, when passed by value, have to be copied and that consumes memory.

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Last I checked, 8 was twice the value of 4. "Lightning fast" is not the same as "zero impact".

Last I checked, 4 was as much as 4, and greater than 2 and 1. Consequently, there will not be any advantage of pass by reference over a copy of some built-in types with respect to memory, which, from what I see, is Daved's point when making the distinction between class types and built-in types.

I note that even for passing a double the expense would also be "a fixed, and relatively small, upper bound", albeit possibly larger than that of pass by reference/pointer.

Originally Posted by Elysia

That's what I believe anyway. I might be wrong

Can I quote you on that?
Oops too late, I just couldn't resist.

Originally Posted by laserlight

Last I checked, 4 was as much as 4, and greater than 2 and 1. Consequently, there will not be any advantage of pass by reference over a copy of some built-in types with respect to memory, which, from what I see, is Daved's point when making the distinction between class types and built-in types.

I note that even for passing a double the expense would also be "a fixed, and relatively small, upper bound", albeit possibly larger than that of pass by reference/pointer.

Also, the double being 8 bytes long, passed as a reference will be 4 bytes, but as soon as you come to ACCESS the double the compiler will have to read the reference to find the actual double, so depending on the usage pattern, although it saves some stack-space, it doesn't necessarily save any execution time.

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Mats

Originally Posted by grumpy

Ah, I love it when people advocate "do what you can get away with, and hope it won't break" rather than "apply a little more effort and do it right so you know it won't break".

Ah, but I so love that, or at least I used to