Question

class A{

    A(B& ref) : b(ref){}
    B getB(){return this->b;}
    B b;
};

Does getB() return a reference to A.b or the same reference that was given by the constructor?That would be a problem if the original B has been changed outside of A but A.getB() still returns the old B.
If this would be the case, is there a way to avoid that?

Answer 1

Nope, only a copy of ref is stored in the b member of the corresponding instance of A, and a copy of this is what’s returned by getB.

To return the instance of B that the instance of A was initialized with (not what you want to do, but ffr), you would do this:

class A{

    A(B& ref) : b(ref){}
    B& getB(){return this->b;}
    B& b;
};