What is the real difference between Pointers and References?

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It’s all just indirection: The ability to not deal with data, but say “I’ll direct you to some data, over there”. You have the same concept in Java and C#, but only in reference format.

The key differences are that references are effectively immutable signposts – they always point to something. This is useful, and easy to understand, but less flexible than the C pointer model. C pointers are signposts that you can happily rewrite. You know that the string you’re looking for is next door to the string being pointed at? Well, just slightly alter the signpost.

This couples well with C’s “close to the bone, low level knowledge required” approach. We know that a char* foo consists of a set of characters beginning at the location pointed to by the foo signpost. If we also know that the string is at least 10 characters long, we can change the signpost to (foo + 5) to point at then same string, but start half the length in.

This flexibility is useful when you know what you’re doing, and death if you don’t (where “know” is more than just “know the language”, it’s “know the exact state of the program”). Get it wrong, and your signpost is directing you off the edge of a cliff. References don’t let you fiddle, so you’re much more confident that you can follow them without risk (especially when coupled with rules like “A referenced object will never disappear”, as in most Garbage collected languages).

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