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use a code snippet to demonstrate the difference between passing arguments by reference and passing arguments by value in a function

Question

Use a code snippet to demonstrate the difference between passing arguments by reference and passing arguments by value in a function

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Solution

Sure, I'll use Python to demonstrate this. Python uses a mechanism, which is known as "Call-by-Object", sometimes also called "Call by Object Reference" or "Call by Sharing".

If you pass immutable arguments like integers, strings or tuples to a function, the passing acts like call-by-value. The object reference is passed to the function parameters. They can't change the original data because they work on the copied data.

If you pass mutable arguments like lists, they are also passed by object reference, but they can change the original data in the function. This is because they directly modify the original data.

Here is a code snippet to demonstrate this:

# Here is a function that tries to modify its arguments
def try_to_change(x, y):
    x = 20
    y.append(40)
    print("Inside function: ", x, y)

# Initialize variables
x = 10
y = [10, 20, 30]

print("Before function call: ", x, y)

# Call the function
try_to_change(x, y)

print("After function call: ", x, y)

In this code, x is an integer (which is immutable) and y is a list (which is mutable). When we call try_to_change, it tries to change x and y. However, after the function call, x is still 10, because an integer is immutable. On the other hand, y has been changed to [10, 20, 30, 40], because a list is mutable.

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