Declaring Pointers and References

When declaring a pointer to an object or data type, you basically follow the same rules of declaring variables and data types that you have been using, only now, to declare a pointer of SOMETYPE, you tack on an asterix * between the data type and its variable.

To declare a reference, you do the exact same thing you did to declare a pointer, only this time, rather than using an asterix *, use instead an ampersand &.

As you probably have already learned, spacing in C++ does not matter, so the following pointer declarations are identical:

The following reference declarations are identical as well: