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InfoQ Homepage Articles Is Ruby Pass-by-Value Or Pass-by-Reference?

Is Ruby Pass-by-Value Or Pass-by-Reference?

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Key Takeaways

  • Learn how ruby internally manages memory for variable allocations
  • Understand what happens when variables are passed as method parameters
  • Write better Ruby code by understanding how parameter variables are modified
     

Before you begin

Before we answer the question in the title, think about if you had given any thought on how parameters are passed around in Ruby. If you never had, but you have been using Ruby for a while, try to get the answer in your mind now, before you read further.

Readers saying Ruby uses pass by value: you are wrong.
Readers saying it uses pass by reference: you are also wrong.

What then? Well, read on.

Ruby and its essence

In Ruby everything is an object. Even the primitive value integer is an object. Variables are nothing but references to objects' memory location. Consider the following:

a = { :message => 'success' }

Here, a is a variable and points to a memory location in Ruby's object space. You can see that by doing this:

2.7.0 :039 > a.object_id
 => 320 

Remember in Ruby there's an object_id for every variable, even for variables having nil as their value:

2.7.0 :040 > a = nil
2.7.0 :041 > a.object_id
=> 8

The object_id is supposed to change everytime the Ruby process is rerun and since memory allocation happens at runtime, it will be different for various runs of the Ruby process. Anyway, the object_id of certain objects like false, true, nil, and integer values is always the same. You can ask why. There is an internal magic in MRI that always assigns those values the same object_id but that would be the topic for another article. In any case, you can remember this: object_id always changes for objects that we create, except for false, true, nil and some integers.

Heap, stack, what?

If you know how application (ie, process) memory is allocated, you would also know that there are two pools of memory that are used: stack and heap. Stack memory is used to push objects onto the stack during method invocation and to pop them after the method returns, as well as to allocate local variables used in the method call (I am keeping it in very simple terms). Heap memory is used for dynamic objects - typically a pointer is stored on the stack while the memory is allocated on the heap and eventually freed. A good way to explain this is looking at a C program:

int main() {
  int a = 42;
  int *p;
  p = (int*)malloc(sizeof(int));
  // use p
  free(p);
}

This program would approximately create a memory space like this:

The stack is populated with the variables a and p in that order. Since a contains an integer value, its value is directly stored on the stack. Instead, p is a pointer to the heap and contains a reference to the memory location on the heap. The heap contains the memory block with the actual data.

This is how it typically works in a C Program.


Let's explore how this is different in Ruby. The memory space in a Ruby process is stored a little bit differently. Ruby's memory space consists of two heaps. Please remember I am talking about the MRI version of Ruby (which is built using C) while other versions of Ruby will have different implementations. 

You can see that there's a managed heap and an unmanaged heap. It would be great to understand what happens inside the managed heap. So let's focus on it for a moment. Also you can see that there's no stack that's being used. You will understand why in a little bit.

Ruby's managed heap consists of pages and each page consists of slots of 40 bytes each. It's easier to explain this using a diagram:

Pages are of static size, usually 16KiB, and each page contains slots of 40 bytes. So a page contains 407 or 408 slots (why the difference in some cases is for another article). So let's see how pages look.

The pages can be full or can be partially used or totally free. The slots are used when objects are allocated. So when you say a = 'hello', a free slot is found and the value is stored into that slot. Now the slot becomes occupied/used. 

Now let's consider the Ruby program -

a = 'hello'
b = {}
c = { message: 'hi' }
d = User.new(email: 'test@test.com', password: 'something random')

All these objects are stored in Ruby's managed heap. So variable a could point to an object_id of lets say 40; b could point to the next free slot of 80; c could point to the free slot of 160; and d could point to 240.

You can ask: how is it possible the whole object of class User is stored within 40 bytes? The answer is that it is not stored on the managed heap,but rather its memory is allocated on the unmanaged heap and the corresponding memory location is stored in the managed heap slot instead. So it becomes a reference to the object on the unmanaged heap. 

The rule of thumb is this: if a value can be stored within the 40B slot, it will be stored there. Otherwise, Ruby will allocate memory on the unmanaged heap and store the object there, while its reference will be stored in the slot.

A quick note: Hashes are stored as a slot and the slot contains references to other slots for their k-v pairs. Similarly small arrays are stored in the slot itself otherwise unmanaged heap is used.

So this is how Ruby's memory allocation happens in a nutshell.

Reference or Value?

So when you are calling a method in Ruby, the parameters are copied by value from the source variables but they are ultimately references to slots. We can show it this way.

2.7.0 :042 > a = { :message => 'success' }
2.7.0 :043 > a.object_id
 => 340 
2.7.0 :044 > def test(val)
2.7.0 :045 >   puts val.object_id
2.7.0 :046 > end
 => :test 
2.7.0 :047 > test(a)
340
 => nil 
2.7.0 :048 > 

You can see that the parameter inside the method call also contains the same object_id as the outside variable that was passed to it. Both the parameter and the outside variable point to the same slot.

Does this mean pass by reference? Actually no.

Consider

2.7.0 :052 > a = { :message => 'success' }
2.7.0 :053 > a.object_id
 => 340 
2.7.0 :054 > def test(val)
2.7.0 :055 >   val = { :message => 'another value' }
2.7.0 :056 >   puts val.object_id
2.7.0 :057 > end
 => :test 
2.7.0 :058 > test(a)
360
 => nil 

When you are reassigning the parameter inside the method, you are actually allocating a new slot. So the object_id actually changes to the next free slot (here 360 instead of the actual 340). What does that mean? The variable, when it's reassigned, is given a new slot and the old slot (340) is never changed.

So is this pass by value? Actually no.

Consider this,

2.7.0 :059 > a = { :message => 'success' }
2.7.0 :060 > def test(val)
2.7.0 :061 >   val[:added] = 'yes'
2.7.0 :062 > end
 => :test 
2.7.0 :063 > a
 => {:message=>"success"} 
2.7.0 :064 > test(a)
 => "yes" 
2.7.0 :065 > a
 => {:message=>"success", :added=>"yes"}

You can see that the original hash is changed when the variable is modified through the parameter. So why does this happen?

The answer is simple. Ruby copies the slot object_id during method invocations to the parameters, but this is a new variable and not a reference to the original variable. Since the new variable points to the same page slot, any modifications you do to this object is also done on the original variable. But when you reassign the parameter variable to a new slot (or object), the original variable is not affected because only the object_id of the parameter variable is changed and not the original variable.

So this is exactly what happens in Ruby. So what is it? Some call it pass by reference value, others call it pass by object reference. But I call it pass by object_id. Makes it easier to remember.

Remember: It's pass by object_id

About the Author

Jey Geethan is a techie turned author. He is passionate about architecture, enterprise agility and microservices. He pens down novels, short stories, and poems as a hobby. He also runs a foundation to help deserving kids with their education. He runs multiple blogs covering software engineering, business on his website. He can be found at Jey Geethan or Twitter.

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