C++ reference variable again!!!
- by kumar_m_kiran
Hi All,
I think most would be surprised about the topic again, However I am referring to a book "C++ Common Knowledge: Essential Intermediate Programming" written by "Stephen C. Dewhurst".
In the book, he quotes a particular sentence (in section under Item 5. References Are Aliases, Not Pointers), which is as below
A reference is an alias for an object that already exists prior to the initialization of the reference. Once a reference is initialized to refer to a particular object, it cannot later be made to refer to a different object; a reference is bound to its initializer for its whole lifetime
Can anyone please explain the context of "cannot later be made to refer to a different object"
Below code works for me,
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int i = 100;
int& ref = i;
cout<<ref<<endl;
int k = 2000;
ref = k;
cout<<ref<<endl;
return 0;
}
Here I am referring the variable ref to both i and j variable.
And the code works perfectly fine.
Am I missing something? I have used SUSE10 64bit linux for testing my sample program.
Thanks for your input in advance.
