What are the differences between a pointer variable and a reference variable in C++?
Question:
I know references are syntactic sugar, so code is easier to read and write.
But what are the differences?
Summary from answers and links below:
- A pointer can be re-assigned any number of times while a reference can not be re-seated after binding.
-
Pointers can point nowhere (
NULL
), whereas reference always refer to an object. - You can't take the address of a reference like you can with pointers.
-
There's no "reference arithmetics" (but you can take the address of an object pointed by a reference and do pointer arithmetics on it as in
&obj + 5
).
To clarify a misconception:
The C++ standard is very careful to avoid dictating how a compiler must implement references, but every C++ compiler implements references as pointers. That is, a declaration such as:
int&ri = i;
if it's not optimized away entirely, allocates the same amount of storage as a pointer, and places the address of i into that storage.
So, a pointer and a reference both occupy the same amount of memory.
As a general rule,
- Use references in function parameters and return types to define useful and self-documenting interfaces.
- Use pointers to implement algorithms and data structures.
Interesting read:
Answer:-
A pointer can be re-assigned:
int x =5;int y =6;int*p; p =&x; p =&y;*p =10; assert(x ==5); assert(y ==10);
A reference cannot, and must be assigned at initialization:
int x =5;int y =6;int&r = x;
-
A pointer has its own memory address and size on the stack (4 bytes on x86), whereas a reference shares the same memory address (with the original variable) but also takes up some space on the stack. Since a reference has the same address as the original variable itself, it is safe to think of a reference as another name for the same variable. Note: What a pointer points to can be on the stack or heap. Ditto a reference. My claim in this statement is not that a pointer must point to the stack. A pointer is just a variable that holds a memory address. This variable is on the stack. Since a reference has its own space on the stack, and since the address is the same as the variable it references. More on stack vs heap. This implies that there is a real address of a reference that the compiler will not tell you.
int x =0;int&r = x;int*p =&x;int*p2 =&r; assert(p == p2);
-
You can have pointers to pointers to pointers offering extra levels of indirection. Whereas references only offer one level of indirection.
int x =0;int y =0;int*p =&x;int*q =&y;int**pp =&p; pp =&q;//*pp = q**pp =4; assert(y ==4); assert(x ==0);
-
Pointer can be assigned NULL directly, whereas reference cannot. If you try hard enough, and you know how, you can make the address of a reference NULL. Likewise, if you try hard enough you can have a reference to a pointer, and then that reference can contain NULL.
int*p = NULL;int&r = NULL;<--- compiling error
-
Pointers can iterate over an array, you can use
++
to go to the next item that a pointer is pointing to, and+ 4
to go to the 5th element. This is no matter what size the object is that the pointer points to. -
A pointer needs to be dereferenced with
*
to access the memory location it points to, whereas a reference can be used directly. A pointer to a class/struct uses->
to access it's members whereas a reference uses a.
. -
A pointer is a variable that holds a memory address. Regardless of how a reference is implemented, a reference has the same memory address as the item it references.
-
References cannot be stuffed into an array, whereas pointers can be (Mentioned by user @litb)
-
Const references can be bound to temporaries. Pointers cannot (not without some indirection):
constint&x =int(12);//legal C++int*y =&int(12);//illegal to dereference a temporary.
This makes
const&
safer for use in argument lists and so forth.
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