Passing integers as constant references versus copying

Question

This might be a stupid question, but I notice that in a good number of APIs, a lot of method signatures that take integer parameters that aren\'t intended to be modified loo

Answer 1

To me, it looks like both of these would function exactly the same.

It depends on exactly what the reference is to. Here is an admittedly made up example that would change based on whether you pass a reference or a value:

static int global_value = 0;

int doit(int x)
{
    ++global_value;
    return x + 1;
}

int main()
{
    return doit(global_value);
}

This code will behave differently depending on whether you have int doit(int) or int doit(const int &)