Thread: Reference and Pointers

I was going through the Faq- What's the difference between... > '&' and '*' (C++)?

It says:
References cannot have operations performed on them since they are not variables

but if I have something like :
int i = 1;
int& r = i;

then I can do
r++; to increment r.

So what does the above statement mean?

It increments the value referred to by the reference (the value of i). It does not increment the reference itself.

If you did the same with the pointer, the pointer would point to a new value:

Code:

int i = 1;
int* p = i;
p++; // increment the pointer (technically undefined behavior)

Originally Posted by Shal

I was going through the Faq- What's the difference between... > '&' and '*' (C++)?

It says:
References cannot have operations performed on them since they are not variables

but if I have something like :
int i = 1;
int& r = i;

then I can do
r++; to increment r.

So what does the above statement mean?

Think of a reference as simply an alias or nickname for another existing object in your program. Pointers, on the other hand, are objects themselves, with their own place in memory, and a value.

Since a reference isn't an object (a reference doesn't really physically 'exist' anywhere), then there's not really any way you can perform an operation on a reference. Any operation you perform on the nickname/alias is actually performed on the referred object instead.

In general, references are easier than pointers to learn, but references cannot be NULL, where as a pointer can. You cannot assign a reference to nothing.