Pointer vs. Reference

Question

What would be better practice when giving a function the original variable to work with:

unsigned long x = 4;

void func1(unsigned long& val) {
     val          


        

Answer 1

My rule of thumb is:

Use pointers if you want to do pointer arithmetic with them (e.g. incrementing the pointer address to step through an array) or if you ever have to pass a NULL-pointer.

Use references otherwise.