passing by address vs passing by reference

**Polymorphic OOP** · 01-09-2003

The phrase "pass by reference" was used in C even before C++ to refer to passing data via a pointer to the location of the object.

Passing a pointer by value can be looked at as passing a value by reference. Passing by reference just means that you aren't copying the data that you will be directly working with, you are dealing with it indirectly.

The concept of passing by refernce is the same in both C and C++, it's just that things become more confusing in terms of the because in C++ there are more ways of doing it and because there actually is a such thing as a "reference."

**Nick** · 01-09-2003

In c, they needed a way to simulate a pascal function such
as

Code:

procedure swap(var a : integer, var b : integer)
begin
     t : integer;
 
     t = a;
     a = b;
     b = t;
end

It's been a long time since I programed in pascal but
the var modifier makes the variables pass by referance.
The usual definition of pass by referance is that the caller
can modify the variable not just what the variable points to.
But this leaves out c++ const pass by referance.

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