I have read from the Wikipedia that:
“References cannot be null, whereas pointers can; every reference refers to some object, although it may or may n
clang 3.5 even warns on a possible later NULL check of a reference:
/tmp/person.C:11:6: warning: reference cannot be bound to dereferenced null pointer in well-defined C++ code; pointer may be assumed to
always convert to true [-Wundefined-bool-conversion]
if (&object1) {}
~~ ^~~~~~~
1 warning generated.