Question

I’m novice at C++, and I want to understand the difference between the examples below.

We can’t create function

void someFunc(int &*a){
    int *b=new int; //just for example
    a=b;
}

but using typedef

typedef int* pint;

void someFunc(pint &a){
    int *b=new int; //just for example
    a=b;
}

everything is alright.

Is it just a compiler trick, or is the reason for such behavior more complicated?

Answer 1

pint& a is equivalent to int*& a, not int&* a. You can’t have a pointer-to-reference type in C++, but you can have a reference-to-pointer type.