[ruby-on-rails] Is Ruby pass by reference or by value?

Ruby uses "pass by object reference"

(Using Python's terminology.)

To say Ruby uses "pass by value" or "pass by reference" isn't really descriptive enough to be helpful. I think as most people know it these days, that terminology ("value" vs "reference") comes from C++.

In C++, "pass by value" means the function gets a copy of the variable and any changes to the copy don't change the original. That's true for objects too. If you pass an object variable by value then the whole object (including all of its members) get copied and any changes to the members don't change those members on the original object. (It's different if you pass a pointer by value but Ruby doesn't have pointers anyway, AFAIK.)

class A {
  public:
    int x;
};

void inc(A arg) {
  arg.x++;
  printf("in inc: %d\n", arg.x); // => 6
}

void inc(A* arg) {
  arg->x++;
  printf("in inc: %d\n", arg->x); // => 1
}

int main() {
  A a;
  a.x = 5;
  inc(a);
  printf("in main: %d\n", a.x); // => 5

  A* b = new A;
  b->x = 0;
  inc(b);
  printf("in main: %d\n", b->x); // => 1

  return 0;
}

Output:

in inc: 6
in main: 5
in inc: 1
in main: 1

In C++, "pass by reference" means the function gets access to the original variable. It can assign a whole new literal integer and the original variable will then have that value too.

void replace(A &arg) {
  A newA;
  newA.x = 10;
  arg = newA;
  printf("in replace: %d\n", arg.x);
}

int main() {
  A a;
  a.x = 5;
  replace(a);
  printf("in main: %d\n", a.x);

  return 0;
}

Output:

in replace: 10
in main: 10

Ruby uses pass by value (in the C++ sense) if the argument is not an object. But in Ruby everything is an object, so there really is no pass by value in the C++ sense in Ruby.

In Ruby, "pass by object reference" (to use Python's terminology) is used:

• Inside the function, any of the object's members can have new values assigned to them and these changes will persist after the function returns.*
• Inside the function, assigning a whole new object to the variable causes the variable to stop referencing the old object. But after the function returns, the original variable will still reference the old object.

Therefore Ruby does not use "pass by reference" in the C++ sense. If it did, then assigning a new object to a variable inside a function would cause the old object to be forgotten after the function returned.

class A
  attr_accessor :x
end

def inc(arg)
  arg.x += 1
  puts arg.x
end

def replace(arg)
  arg = A.new
  arg.x = 3
  puts arg.x
end

a = A.new
a.x = 1
puts a.x  # 1

inc a     # 2
puts a.x  # 2

replace a # 3
puts a.x  # 2

puts ''

def inc_var(arg)
  arg += 1
  puts arg
end

b = 1     # Even integers are objects in Ruby
puts b    # 1
inc_var b # 2
puts b    # 1

Output:

1
2
2
3
2

1
2
1

* This is why, in Ruby, if you want to modify an object inside a function but forget those changes when the function returns, then you must explicitly make a copy of the object before making your temporary changes to the copy.