blz has an operator called the ! or bang! operator.

This operator allows you to choose between passing by value (default) or passing by reference (by using a !).

You can use the bang! operator by adding an ! to the name of a function. e.g sort => sort! reverse => reverse! * map => map!

Let's look at an example to see what this means.

array = [3, 1, 2]

# Because this call to sort doesn't use a !, the array is copied and then passed to sort
sorted = array.sort()
print("No Bang")
print("Sorted: " + sorted)
print("Original " + array)
print("")

# The bang! operator passes a reference to our array
bang_sorted = array.sort!()
print("With Bang")
print("Sorted: " + bang_sorted)
print("Original: " + array)

The output looks like this

No Bang
Sorted: [1, 2, 3]
Original: [3, 1, 2]

With Bang
Sorted: [1, 2, 3]
Original: [1, 2, 3]

As you can see, using the bang! operator lets the sort function modify our original array.