Call by Value and Call by Reference( pass by value and pass by reference)

There are two ways to pass arguments/parameters to function calls -- call by value and call by reference.. The major difference between call by value and call by reference is that in call by value a copy of actual arguments is passed to respective formal arguments. While, in call by reference the location (address) of actual arguments is passed to formal arguments, hence any change made to formal arguments will also reflect in actual arguments.

In C, all function arguments are passed "by value". The calling and called functions do not share any memory -- they have their own copy and the called function cannot directly alter a variable in the calling function; it can only alter its private, temporary copy. There are cases we need call by reference.

1.The called function communicates to the calling function only through return statement and return statement can only send one value back to the calling function. If there are more than one value we want to alter, call by reference is required

2. If the size of data is large , copying actual arguments to formal arguments could be a time consuming operation and occupies more memory.

To achieve call by reference functionality in C language the calling function provides the address of the variable to be set (technically a pointer to the variable), and the called function declares the parameter to be a pointer and access the variable indirectly through it. Since the address of the argument is passed to the function, code within the called function can change the value of the actual arguments.

call by value	call by reference
In call by value, a copy of actual arguments is passed to formal arguments of the called function and any change made to the formal arguments in the called function have no effect on the values of actual arguments in the calling function.	In call by reference, the location (address) of actual arguments is passed to formal arguments of the called function. This means by accessing the addresses of actual arguments we can alter them within from the called function.
In call by value, actual arguments will remain safe, they cannot be modified accidentally.	In call by reference, alteration to actual arguments is possible within from called function; therefore the code must handle arguments carefully else you get unexpected results.

Example using Call by Value

The classic example of wanting to modify the caller's memory is a swapByValue() function which exchanges two values. For C uses call by value, the following version of swap swapByValue() will not work...

#include <stdio.h>
void swapByValue(int a, int b)
{
int t;
t = a; a = b; b = t;
}
int main() /* Main function */
{
int n1 = 10, n2 = 20;
/* actual arguments will be as it is */
swapByValue(n1, n2);
printf("n1: %d, n2: %d\n", n1, n2);
}
OUTPUT
======
n1: 10, n2: 20

The swapByValue() does not affect the arguments n1 and n2 in the calling function it only operates on a and b local to swapByValue() itself. This is a good example of how local variables behave.

Example using Call by Reference

In call by reference, to pass a variable n as a reference parameter, the programmer must pass a pointer to 'n' instead of 'n' itself. The formal parameter will be a pointer to the value of interest. The calling function will need to use '&' to compute the pointer of actual parameter. The called function will need to dereference the pointer with '*' where appropriate to access the value of interest. Here is an example of a correct swap swapByReference() function. So, now you got the difference between call by value and call by reference!

#include <stdio.h>
void swapByReference(int *a, int *b)
{
int t;
t = *a; *a = *b; *b = t;
}
int main() /* Main function */
{
int n1 = 10, n2 = 20;
/* actual arguments will be altered */
swapByReference(&n1, &n2);
printf("n1: %d, n2: %d\n", n1, n2);
}
OUTPUT
======
n1: 20, n2: 10

Note: Arrays are passed by reference in C. Any modification you make on the array using the formal parameters with in the function will affect the original array.