Bug - Not A Bug ASH: aggregate inside a function persists unexpectedly

[basic lihc]

void printoutput(int[int] input_argument)
{
    int[int] incremented = input_argument;
    print_html(incremented[1]);
    incremented[1] += 1;
}

int[int] input;
input[1] = 0;
printoutput(input);
printoutput(input);
printoutput(input);

Returns:

0
1
2

Unless I misunderstand something what is expected is
the aggregate inside the function would not keep a persistent value when the function is called several times,
the input would prevail when writing it into the aggregate,
or an error message if it's wrong to modify a copy of an aggregate that was passed as argument? there is no error like "Cannot modify constant value"

 

[Veracity]

Aggregates are passed by reference. We do not make a deep copy that you can modify without affecting other places that have that reference.

Just like Java.

I have written many scripts that depend on this behaviour.

This is behaving as intended.

 

[basic lihc]

Ok thanks for clarifying
the aggregate inside the function was not persisting, instead the "input" aggregate itself was getting modified

 

[Veracity]

Right. ASH passes objects around. Objects like ints, floats, strings, elements, … are not mutable. Composite objects - maps, arrays, records - are mutable. There are some aggregate objects -plural typed constants - $ints[1, 2, 3], for example - which are immutable. But aggregates you create by yourself can be passed to a function and modified there and the caller will see the modifications.