Java- passing Lists to methods working as pass by reference

Question

There are lot of discussions in stackoverflow regarding pass by value and pass by reference. But i want to know what is happening in the following scenario? This page says java is pass by value. Is Java "pass-by-reference" or "pass-by-value"?.

In case of following code, the the element is removed from the removeElement method , it is removing the 5th element from list when i print the list.

public class Load {
    public static void main(String[] args) {


        ArrayList<Integer> list = new ArrayList<Integer>();
        list.addAll(Arrays.asList(1,1,2,3,5,5,13,21));
        removeElement(list);
        System.out.println(list);
    }
        public static void removeElement(List<Integer> list){
            list.remove(5);//removes element at index 5
        }
}

The output of the program is [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 13, 21].

Can somebody explain how this is pass by value rather than pass by reference?

Answer 1

Java is always pass by value. The value of any variable of type Object is actually a reference. That's why, for example, == is said to be a reference comparison, and you need to use .equals() for comparing Object(s).