Recap of References

• Java does not support explicit pointers like C++.

• Everything in Java is a reference, except primitives.

• Assignment and argument passing for non-primitives is done using references.

• Internally, a reference is like a pointer, except that the programmer does not have to dereference it or deal with pointer arithmetic because Java does this automatically.

• Two important points to remember related to references:
  
  
  1. If you want two objects to actually be separate objects that have the same values, use new. If you do not, changing a value in one object will also change the value in the other since they will point to the same object in memory.

  2. Non-primitive arguments are pass by reference so if an argument is changed in a method, the object's value is really changed, even after the method returns.