I've declared the following hashmap:

HashMap<Integer, Hive> hives

Where Hive is an object.

If I call "hives.get(2)" will it return a copy of the object Hive at that location or a reference to it?

My goal is to modify the Hive object at that location. If it returns the reference, I can just modify the returned hive and be done. However, if a copy gets returned then I'll have to put that copy back into the hashmap.

Sorry for the simple question. I tried looking around for a solution, but everywhere I looked it simply said the value would be returned, it didn't say if it would be a copy of the value or a reference to it.

Thanks, Zain

java object reference hashmap
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