Question

Somebody ask me this question today .
What is the need of reference in C++, why did Bjarne Stroustrup thought about reference in C++.

Answer 1

Here is Stroustrup explanation : http://www2.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq2.html#pointers-and-references

C++ inherited pointers from C, so I couldn’t remove them without causing serious compatibility problems. References are useful for several things, but the direct reason I introduced them in C++ was to support operator overloading.

Here is an example :

void f1(const complex* x, const complex* y) // without references
{
    complex z = *x+*y;  // ugly
    // ...
}

void f2(const complex& x, const complex& y) // with references
{
    complex z = x+y;    // better
    // ...
}