Before answering your question, I hope that you have good idea of practical usage of references in c++.

If not then read this:
References are like alias of an entity.
For example:
int p = 10;
int &a = p;
Here a‘s address and content is similar to that of p.

Next is a simple example which will make you clear of your confusion regarding references.

int a=10;
int *b=NULL;
int &c=a;
cout<<&a<<endl;
cout<<&b<<endl;
cout<<&c<<endl;

Output:

0012FF6C

0012FF68

0012FF6C

In this example we have three variables (a,b and c)

a – is a int variable;

b – is a integer pointer (pointing to NULL, not initialized)

c – is a reference to the address of a

Look at the output, you will make it out that a & b are having different addresses

but c‘s address = a‘s address (obviously, c is a reference to a).

So from output it is also clear that a & b both are occupying some memory in stack.

Now you might be having some doubt about b.

b Itself is a variable of type unsigned integer holding a value (NULL or 0).(all pointers are of type unsigned int)

But if we intialize b (b = new int) then b will hold a value or an address of

an allocated memory in heap, which means it will now pointing to some memory allocated in heap.

What about c? It is showing same address and content as of a.

Then where does it occupies the memory.

To get some overview about we will go through an another example:

Arrangle all three variables in a structure.

struct some_struct

}


Output:

12

Looking at the output, we can make it out that c is also occupying some memory in stack,

(4 bytes for a + 4 bytes for b and 4 bytes for c.)

but we can’t reflect it using address operator(&).

That’s it , I hope this explanation is helpful to you.

Nirmal

Can you plss mention where are reference types and value types stored on he memory in C++? I mean on the heap or stack.

As i know if we write a program using C#.net reference types are stored on stack while value types are stored on heap.