Hi,

I am new to java programming and seem to have got myself into a bit of
confusion with assigning and using reference variables.
Below is a snippet of code I an using for a linkedlist.

public class LinkedList
{
  private Node start;

  public LinkedList()
  {
     start=null;
  }

  public Node find (int x)
  {
     if (start==null || start.data>0)
        return null;
     Node p = start;                //*************** help
     while (p.next != nul && !(p.next.data > x))
        p=p.next;
     return p;
  }

...
...
}

Can some please point out and explain to me why when assigning
reference 'start' to p and then using p within the while loop, start is
NOT affected/changed?

thanks in advance...