Why is it impossible to have a reference-to-void?

Question

Why is it impossible to have a reference to void? The only thing I found in the C++ Standard is this line, at 8.3.2.1

A declarator th

Answer 1

If you did have a reference to void, what would you do with it? It wouldn't be a number, or a character, or a pointer, or anything like that. Your hypothetical generic function couldn't perform any operation on it, except taking its address (and not its size).

"void" has two uses: to disclaim any knowledge of type (as in void *), and to specify nothing as opposed to something (void function return). In neither case is it possible to say anything about a void something except that it may have an address.

If you can't think of a way something can be useful, and I can't, that is at least evidence that something is useless, and that may well be at least part of the rationale here.