Question

I’ve always been told that we should not pass POD by reference. But recently I’ve discovered that a reference actually takes no memory at all.

So why do we choose to write:

void DoSomething(int iNumber);

instead of:

void DoSomething(const int& riNumber);

is it not more efficient?

Answer 1

Actually in this case (using int) passing by value is probably more efficient, since only 1 memory-read is needed instead of 2, to access the passed value.

Example (optimized using -O2):

int gl = 0;

void f1(int i)
{
    gl = i + 1;
}

void f2(const int& r)
{
    gl = r + 1;
}

int main()
{
    f1(1);

    f2(1);
}

Asm

    .file   "main.cpp"
    .text
    .p2align 2,,3
.globl __Z2f1i
    .def    __Z2f1i;    .scl    2;  .type   32; .endef
__Z2f1i:
LFB0:
    pushl   %ebp
LCFI0:
    movl    %esp, %ebp
LCFI1:
    movl    8(%ebp), %eax
    incl    %eax
    movl    %eax, _gl
    leave
    ret
LFE0:
    .p2align 2,,3
.globl __Z2f2RKi
    .def    __Z2f2RKi;  .scl    2;  .type   32; .endef
__Z2f2RKi:
LFB1:
    pushl   %ebp
LCFI2:
    movl    %esp, %ebp
LCFI3:
    movl    8(%ebp), %eax
    movl    (%eax), %eax
    incl    %eax
    movl    %eax, _gl
    leave
    ret
LFE1:
    .def    ___main;    .scl    2;  .type   32; .endef
    .p2align 2,,3
.globl _main
    .def    _main;  .scl    2;  .type   32; .endef
_main:
LFB2:
    pushl   %ebp
LCFI4:
    movl    %esp, %ebp
LCFI5:
    andl    $-16, %esp
LCFI6:
    call    ___main
    movl    $2, _gl
    xorl    %eax, %eax
    leave
    ret
LFE2:
.globl _gl
    .bss
    .align 4
_gl:
    .space 4