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References

About C ++ computer language

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18 views2 pages

References

About C ++ computer language

Uploaded by

Hayat Hyt
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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C++ References

Creating References
A reference variable is a "reference" to an existing variable, and it is created
with the & operator:

string food = "Pizza"; // food variable


string &meal = food; // reference to food

Now, we can use either the variable name food or the reference name meal to
refer to the food variable:

Example
string food = "Pizza";
string &meal = food;

cout << food << "\n"; // Outputs Pizza


cout << meal << "\n"; // Outputs Pizza

Memory Address
In the example from the previous page, the & operator was used to create a
reference variable. But it can also be used to get the memory address of a
variable; which is the location of where the variable is stored on the computer.

When a variable is created in C++, a memory address is assigned to the


variable. And when we assign a value to the variable, it is stored in this memory
address.

To access it, use the & operator, and the result will represent where the variable
is stored:

Example
string food = "Pizza";

cout << &food; // Outputs 0x6dfed4

Note: The memory address is in hexadecimal form (0x..). Note that you may not
get the same result in your program.

And why is it useful to know the memory address?


References and Pointers (which you will learn about in the next chapter) are
important in C++, because they give you the ability to manipulate the data in
the computer's memory - which can reduce the code and improve the
performance.

These two features are one of the things that make C++ stand out from other
programming languages, like Python and Java.

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