Why don't I need to check if references are invalid/null?

Question

Reading http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/references.html, it says:

In general, references should always be valid because you must always initi

Answer 1

There is no syntax to check whether reference is valid. You can test pointer for NULL, but there is no valid/invalid test for a reference. Of course, referenced object can be released or overwritten by some buggy code. The same situation is for pointers: if non-NULL pointer points to released object, you cannot test this.