Checking for a null object in C++

Question

I\'ve mostly only worked with C and am running into some unfamiliar issues in C++.

Let\'s say that I have some function like this in C, which would be very typical:<

Answer 1

As everyone said, references can't be null. That is because, a reference refers to an object. In your code:

// this compiles, but doesn't work, and does this even mean anything?
if (&str == NULL)

you are taking the address of the object str. By definition, str exists, so it has an address. So, it cannot be NULL. So, syntactically, the above is correct, but logically, the if condition is always going to be false.

About your questions: it depends upon what you want to do. Do you want the function to be able to modify the argument? If yes, pass a reference. If not, don't (or pass reference to const). See this C++ FAQ for some good details.

In general, in C++, passing by reference is preferred by most people over passing a pointer. One of the reasons is exactly what you discovered: a reference can't be NULL, thus avoiding you the headache of checking for it in the function.