(octave.info)Call by Value

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8.2.1 Call by Value
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In Octave, unlike Fortran, function arguments are passed by value, which
means that each argument in a function call is evaluated and assigned to
a temporary location in memory before being passed to the function.
There is currently no way to specify that a function parameter should be
passed by reference instead of by value.  This means that it is
impossible to directly alter the value of a function parameter in the
calling function.  It can only change the local copy within the function
body.  For example, the function

     function f (x, n)
       while (n-- > 0)
         disp (x);
       endwhile
     endfunction

displays the value of the first argument N times.  In this function, the
variable N is used as a temporary variable without having to worry that
its value might also change in the calling function.  Call by value is
also useful because it is always possible to pass constants for any
function parameter without first having to determine that the function
will not attempt to modify the parameter.

   The caller may use a variable as the expression for the argument, but
the called function does not know this: it only knows what value the
argument had.  For example, given a function called as

     foo = "bar";
     fcn (foo)

you should not think of the argument as being “the variable ‘foo’.”
Instead, think of the argument as the string value, "bar".

   Even though Octave uses pass-by-value semantics for function
arguments, values are not copied unnecessarily.  For example,

     x = rand (1000);
     f (x);

does not actually force two 1000 by 1000 element matrices to exist
_unless_ the function ‘f’ modifies the value of its argument.  Then
Octave must create a copy to avoid changing the value outside the scope
of the function ‘f’, or attempting (and probably failing!)  to modify
the value of a constant or the value of a temporary result.