> C++ references surely are safer than pointer that can point to whatever they feel like and aren't initialized to any safe value. From the C programmer's pers

> C++ references surely are safer than pointer that can point to whatever they feel like and aren't initialized to any safe value. From the C programmer's perspective, a reference is a constant pointer with automatic indirection. As far as 'safety' is concerned, there's not much difference between int& ref = ...; and int *const ptr = ...; except in the most trivial of cases. edit: However, this of course does not mean that references are useless within the C++ context - they do have an effect on how you write your code...