And if you are wanting to pass the raw pointer, you should probably pass by & instead as well. The only real "features" of raw pointers over references are the

And if you are wanting to pass the raw pointer, you should probably pass by & instead as well. The only real "features" of raw pointers over references are the ability to reassign or delete them, and if you are passing something by reference, you do not want anyone doing any such thing to it 99.9% of the time.