What is the meaning of & in c++?

Question

I want to know the meaning of & in the example below:

class1 &class1::instance(){

///something to do

}

Answer 1

This means your method returns a reference to a method1 object. A reference is just like a pointer in that it refers to the object rather than being a copy of it, but the difference with a pointer is that references:

• can never be undefined / NULL
• you can't do pointer arithmetic with them

So they are a sort of light, safer version of pointers.