Question

I would like to understand what happens in the following code

struct A
{
  vector<double> x;
};

void f(A &a)
{
  vector<double> &y = a.x;
}

When the function f exits, is a.x destroyed? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Remember that references are not objects. y is a variable, but not an object. It is a reference to the existing object a.x, but that object itself is not local to the scope of f. So the variable y goes out of scope at the end of f, but the object to which it refers does not.