swap function in java

Hi all,

I want to write a swap function which will swap the values.

int a = 4, b = 5;
swap(a,b);
sop(a + " " + b);

output: 5 4

Please tell me how the swap function will be coded.

Similar discussion here
The topic was about swapping string values, but it has details in general about it.

if you had two glasses, one with water and one with milk, how would you swap the contents of the two glasses?

A clever but stupid way:
x=x+y; y=x; x=x-y;

This will actually swap the variables without creating a third variable.
[ May 05, 2007: Message edited by: Garrett Smith ]

Fred, Garrett - that's not really going to help, is it? Not given they way the question has been asked.

wrushasen - in Java there is no way to do this. Not if a and b are local variables, and you're trying to swap them within a separate method. That's because the variables inside the swap method just get copies of a and b. Nothing you do inside swap will have any effect on the values a and b outside the swap method. The discussion Nitesh linked to is accurate.

If you want to do something like this, then you need to put the data into something besides local primitive variables. A common choice would be to put numbers in an array, then write a method to swap two elements (element i and j) of the array. E.g.
int[] arr = { 1, 2, 3, 4 }; swap(arr, 0, 2); System.out.println(arr[0] + " " + arr[1] + " " + arr[2] + " " + arr[4]);
Output: 3 2 1 4

Try writing a swap() method that will swap two elements of the array, as shown.

I fixed my algorithm which was wrong. Duh.

I do feel that can be helpful to the original post, if you think about some examples.
x = 4, y = -7; x = 4 + -7; // -3; y = 4; x = -3 - -7; // 4
Although I probably did give too much away.