Day 9. Exploiting References
Yesterday, you learned how to use pointers to manipulate objects on the free store and how to refer to those objects indirectly. References, the topic of today’s lesson, give you almost all the power of pointers but with a much easier syntax.
Today, you will learn
• What references are
• How references differ from pointers
• How to create references and use them
• What the limitations of references are
• How to pass values and objects into and out of functions by reference
What Is a Reference?
A reference is an alias; when you create a reference, you initialize it with the name of another object, the target. From that moment on, the reference acts as an alternative name for the target, and anything you do to the ...
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