Passing Variables as reference

In C#, variables such as floats and ints are passed into functions by value. This means that if you have the code

Code (CSharp):

1. int Value=5;
2.  
3. void Start(){
4. DoSomething(Value);
5. Debug.Log(Value);
6. }
7.  
8. private void DoSomething(int value) {
9.     value++;
10. }

, "5" will appear in the console log, as

Value

will not change outside of the function.

How do I pass in an int or float by reference or do something equivalent in UnityScript, such that when

DoSomething(Value);

is called, Value will be increased outside of the function?

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language-reference/keywords/ref

Code (CSharp):

1. int Value = 5;
2.  
3. void Start(){
4.   DoSomething(ref Value);
5.   Debug.Log(Value);
6. }
7. private void DoSomething(ref int valueToChange) {
8.     valueToChange++;
9. }

 

Are you sure this works? I read somewhere that ref doesn’t work with unity, and I got errors when I tried this.

 

Don't know where you read that. It 100% works, and works in Unity. What errors did you get, and what was your code?

Not only does it work in Unity, some of Unity's own functions use it. For example:
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Mathf.SmoothDamp.html

 

hmm, thanks for letting me know! I tried it again, and its working great now! Not sure what I had done wrong initially...

Anyways, what a great tool to learn! thanks for the help!

 

There's also out, which is similar to ref, but doesn't need to be initialized before the function call and must be assigned to before the function returns. This may create better semantics for your use-case.