What's so bad about ref parameters?

Question

I\'m faced with a situation that I think can only be solved by using a ref parameter. However, this will mean changing a method to always accept a ref parameter when I only

Answer 1

Perhaps use an overloaded function for this 5% case and leave the other function as is.

Unnecessary ref parameters can lead to bad design patterns, but if you have a specific need, there's no problem with doing this.