pybind11/docs/faq.rst

Frequently asked questions
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(under construction)

Limitations involving reference arguments
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In C++, it's fairly common to pass arguments using mutable references or
mutable pointers, which allows both read and write access to the value
supplied by the caller. This is sometimes done for efficiency reasons, or to
realize functions that have multiple return values. Here are two very basic
examples:

.. code-block:: cpp

    void increment(int &i) { i++; }
    void increment_ptr(int *i) { (*i)++; }

In Python, all arguments are passed by reference, so there is no general
issue in binding such code from Python.

However, certain basic Python types (like ``str``, ``int``, ``bool``,
``float``, etc.) are **immutable**. This means that the following attempt
to port the function to Python doesn't have the same effect on the value
provided by the caller -- in fact, it does nothing at all.

.. code-block:: python

    def increment(i):
        i += 1 # nope..

pybind11 is also affected by such language-level conventions, which means
that binding ``increment`` or ``increment_ptr`` will also create Python functions that don't modify their arguments.

Although inconvenient, one workaround is to encapsulate the immutable types
in a custom type that does allow modifications.