Rules for Parameter Transmission

• If a value is being passed back via the parameter, it should be passed by-reference (T &)
  • Parameters passed using either of the other two modes — by-value or by-const-reference — will not effect a change; with by-value, all changes are restricted to the local variable (which sis destroyed upon returning from the function), and for by-const-reference, the compiler will prohibit any changes to the parameter within the function
• If the parameter is a predefined type (int, long, double, bool, char, float), the parameter should be passed by=value (T).
  • There is no reason to pass by-const-reference since the predefined types are small in size (whether it 'hurts' to pass by-const-reference is a matter of discussion beyond the scope of our class)
• If the parameter is an object (i.e., a variable whose type is a structure or class), it should be passed by-const-reference
  • As a general rule, we're not interested in knowing the internal fields of a class (we aren't at that stage yet, but we will quickly get there) and thus we don't know its size. Passing large objects can take time, while passing a reference is essentiall the same as passing an integer.