C++: Reference to “out of scope” object

Question

There is one thing I never understood about references and I hope that one might help me. For all I know, a reference cannot be null. But what happens if you have a function

Answer 1

This causes undefined behaviour. Don't do it.

Implementation-wise, realistically, the reference would point into the stack where the stackframe for the call to foo used to be. That memory will in many cases still make sense, so the error is often not immediately apparent. Therefore, you should take care never to make a dangling reference like that.

Answer 2

The behaviour in this context is undefined - this isn't particularly odd in c++. This is essentially identical to the situation where you have a pointer set to a local variable which has gone out of scope. C++ requires YOU control handle references and the lifetime of referenced objects.

Answer 3

nothing before you use the returned reference - then you'll be reading/writing over your stack