8.10. Passing other types by reference¶
It’s not just structures that can be passed by reference. All the other types we’ve seen can, too. For example, to swap two integers, we could write something like:
void swap (int& x, int& y) {
int temp = x;
x = y;
y = temp;
}
We would call this function in the usual way:
int i = 7;
int j = 9;
swap (i, j);
cout << i << j << endl;
The output of this program is 97. Draw a stack diagram for this
program to convince yourself this is true. If the parameters x and
y were declared as regular parameters (without the &s),
swap would not work. It would modify x and y and have no
effect on i and j.
The active code below uses the swap function. Run the active code
for the output!
When people start passing things like integers by reference, they often try to use an expression as a reference argument. For example:
int i = 7;
int j = 9;
swap (i, j+1); // WRONG!!
This is not legal because the expression j+1 is not a variable—it
does not occupy a location that the reference can refer to. It is a
little tricky to figure out exactly what kinds of expressions can be
passed by reference. For now a good rule of thumb is that reference
arguments have to be variables.
- x, y, z
- Correct!
- x, y, z, q
- Pay attention to the placement of the ``&``
- a, b
- Pay attention to the placement of the ``&``
Q-2: What of the parameters in the following code block are pass-by-reference?
void swap (int& x, int& y) {
int temp = x;
x = y;
y = temp;
}
void add (int& z, int q) {
z = z + y;
}
int multiply (int a, int b) {
int total = a * b;
return total;
}
Create a function called add that takes two parameters, an integer x and an integer y. The function should add y to x, then print x. The variable x should be modified, while the variable y should not.