Question

Is there any difference between these methods, other than the obvious that first return an object and second returns the address where the value of myclass is stored?
I’m asking because I rarely see the first method, in many sources, even of big enterprises such as Aeonsoft I always see method 2 being used. However some programmers don’t like & with return, please enlighten me about this.

static myclass& getinstance()
{
    static myclass a;
    return a;
}

static myclass* getinstance()
{
    static myclass a;
    return &a;
}

EDIT
Oh guys my bad, I forgot the & on the first method

Answer 1

The first one makes no sense, because it returns a copy. The latter is a bit silly because there’s no need for a pointer.

The usual way for a singleton creation function is to return a reference:

static Foo & getFoo()
{
    static Foo impl;
    return impl;
}