What is the point of passing by ref?

Question

Why not just make the method return a value?

Answer 1

consider situation that you change multiple variables in function, you can return just one variable from function, but can send multiple variables to function by reference

Answer 2

If your input to a function/method is a big object (an array with 10000 entries for example) and you just want to modify a few elements, there is no need to create a copy of the whole object. But that's precisely what happens, if it's passed by value.

Passing by reference allows you to modify the object itself without needing to copy it.

Answer 3

https://www.sololearn.com/learn/CSharp/2608/

Answer 4

Copies use more resources, including CPU time, stack space and memory.

It's the difference between referring to a person by name and stopping to scan and make a complete clone of them every time they come up.

Are there use cases in each scenario? (depends on what you need)