I think that's why the * is generally preferred over the & for this purpose. It also can give some hints about ownership issues. This "pass by reference" thing

I think that's why the * is generally preferred over the & for this purpose. It also can give some hints about ownership issues. This "pass by reference" thing is syntactic sugar and sometimes is great to have, but as Perlis said, "Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon" [1]. [1] https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html