char*&?

Sorry if this is dumb.

What does char*& mean, in something like

void someFunc(char*& buf, ...)

I understand char*, but what does the ampersand do here?

When passing an address to a function, regardless of the type of variable, the function will not work on a copy of that variable, but the actual variable itself. So when you pass a char*& to a function, you are passing it the actual char pointer, not a copy. This is useful if you want to fill an array with values, for example.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tomcant

When passing an address to a function, regardless of the type of variable, the function will not work on a copy of that variable, but the actual variable itself. So when you pass a char*& to a function, you are passing it the actual char pointer, not a copy. This is useful if you want to fill an array with values, for example.

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You do not need to pass a reference to pointer to fill array members...
But you need it if you want to initialize the pointer in the function with new for example before filling the array... In C in this case you pass pointer to pointer, in C++ - reference to pointer