Difference between pass-by-reference & and *? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here: Passing a modifiable parameter to c++ function (12 answers) Closed 11 months ago.

What is the difference between passing-by-reference and usi开发者_StackOverflow社区ng the C pointer notation?

void some_function(some_type& param)

and

void some_function(some_type *param)

Thanks

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When you pass a pointer to a variable in a subroutine call, the address of that variable is passed to the subroutine. To access the variable in the subroutine, the pointer has to be dereferenced.

When you pass a reference to a variable, the compiler takes care of obtaining the address of the variable when the variable is passed to the subroutine and dereferencing the variable in the subroutine.

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• You can't get a NULL reference: this alone gives you lots of safety
• You can treat your reference as if it was an object: you can dereference it or whatever you need.

Basically you handle a safe pointer as if it was your own object.