Question

Possible Duplicate:
Why are references not reseatable in C++

I am trying to more or less swap two reference variables (as practice, I could have swapped the actual variables). I tried doing this by making a temporary variable and making one of the references equal the other, but this got shot down by the compiler. Here is an example:

void Foo()
{
   //code
   int& ref1 = a;
   int& ref2 = b;
   int temp;

   temp = ref1;
   ref1 = ref2;
   ref2 = temp;

   //or, better yet
   std::swap(ref1, ref2);
}

I got an error, and looked on the faq lite. It details that they cannot be reseated, but does not explain why. Why?

Here is a link to the Faq Lite for reference (<—, get it?).

Answer 1

Because there is no syntax to do it:

int x = 0;
int y = 1;
int & r = x;

Now if I say:

r = y;

I assign the value of y to x. If I wanted to reseat I would need some special syntax:

r @= y;    // maybe?

As the main reason for using references is as parameters and return types of functions, where this is not an issue, it didn’t seem to C++’s designers that this was a path worth going down.