Pre/post increment/decrement and operator order confusion

Question

I was going through some exercises but I am confused in this one:

public static int f (int x, int y) {
  int b=y--;
  while (b>0) {
    if (x%2!=0)  {
            


        

Answer 1

It's poor coding, as it can confuse new programmers.

The function, assuming it is passing by value, like in the example above (as opposed to passing by reference) takes a copy of y, decrements it, and assigns it to b. It does not alter the argument passed to the function when it was called.