Unless I'm misunderstanding you, what you're asking is only possible in a function signature if the compiler inlines it. However, outside of function signature

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, what you're asking is only possible in a function signature if the compiler inlines it. However, outside of function signatures, if you write: int a = 2; int &aref = a; int b = aref; I'd assume that the compiler is smart enough to optimize away &aref.