> Pounding your fist on the table and insisting that Java is pass-by-value because you can't write a swap(x,y) function obscures this crucial difference. Swap

> Pounding your fist on the table and insisting that Java is pass-by-value because you can't write a swap(x,y) function obscures this crucial difference. Swap is just a convenient example. Ultimately, if rebinding the function argument has no externally visible effect, it's not pass-by-reference, but rather pass-pointer-by-value — In C++ terms, a Java method with signature `foo(T arg)` is akin to C++'s `foo (T * const arg)` rather than `foo(T &arg)`.