How is a reference different from a pointer in implementation? [duplicate]

Answer 1

One example where reference ought to be used instead of pointers:

enum day
{
    Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun
};

day d;

day *operator++(day *d);

The operator ++ can be invoked using ++&d, which does not look that intuitive.

One big catch here is that all overloaded operator functions must either be a member of a class, or have a parameter of type T, T &, or T const &, where T is a class or enumeration type. So, in this case day *operator++(day *d); won't even compile.

It works fine using reference i.e.

day &operator++(day &d);

which can be invoked simply as ++d;

Here is a nice article from where I got this example.

cheers