?"table values vs references"

Hi,

What is the best way to pass tables around in functions? I’ve large tables and I am writing functions to handle operations such as saving them. If I pass the table as it is by value, then it will create a copy of table at each assignment of a function call. This could be really expensive for large tables. However, if I pass the reference around (`tab), then certain operations such as .Q.en, .Q.par, select ,update, etc don’t work as they expect table value not reference.

So what is the ideal approach to handle tables?

thanks for your input.