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From: frose@synoptics.COM (Flavio Rose)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Why use reference type over pointer type?
Summary: Why I prefer the C way
Message-ID: <21810@lute.com>
Date: 4 Aug 90 00:23:30 GMT
References: <1676@dinl.mmc.UUCP> <5720@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Organization: SynOptics Communications Inc. Mountain View, Ca.
Lines: 22

The beauty of the C way of doing call-by-reference is the
following:

Suppose you are reading or debugging someone else's code (a
very common activity), and you come across a call

	foo(a,b,&c);

and a, b, c are of scalar type. Then you can say
immediately, without bothering to look up foo's function
prototype anywhere, "aha, foo munges c but not a or b."
Often you don't care to know more about foo() than that, so
this saves time and doesn't make you interrupt your train
of thought to look up a prototype.

(I think liking little old-fashioned conveniences of this
kind makes one fall into a kind of pattern, which I call
"troglodytic programming." In opposition to troglodytic
programmers we find the futurists, who always follow the
latest fad, place an assertion after every statement so
their code will be fully self-checking, and are eager to
reach the Nirvana of "nonprocedural code.")