> References can be copied > But it doesn’t do the same thing as assigning to them I think, that's not a good mental model for references. A reference is an op

> References can be copied > But it doesn’t do the same thing as assigning to them I think, that's not a good mental model for references. A reference is an opaque data type. The initial assignment is "taking a reference" and all later operations work the same, as you would refer to the referenced object itself. So int& r2 = r1; // r2 now points to i, like r1 I would rather say int& r2 = r1; // r2 now references i, like r1 Because it isn't a pointer. It may be implemented as one (e.g. when passing arguments to functions), but in this case, I don't think, even that will happen. You just have another name for the same object.