A reference is an alternate name for an object/variable. Reference is an implicit constant pointer to a variable. It can’t be used to point memory location say 0x1000. On the other hand, pointers can be used to point to any location in the memory. To access any address, we'd need to use pointers instead of references.
Here is a simple example of reference/pointer.
int i = 10;
mov dword ptr [i],0Ah // dis-assembly code
Reference:
int &ref = i;
lea eax,[i] // disassembly code
mov dword ptr [ref],eax // dis-assembly code
int j = ref;
mov eax,dword ptr [ref] // dis-assembly code
mov ecx,dword ptr [eax] // dis-assembly code
mov dword ptr [j],ecx // dis-assembly code
Pointer:
int *ptr = &i;
lea eax,[i] // disassembly code
mov dword ptr [ptr],eax // dis-assembly code
j = *ptr;
mov eax,dword ptr [ptr] // dis-assembly code
mov ecx,dword ptr [eax] // dis-assembly code
mov dword ptr [j],ecx // dis-assembly code
If you see their dis assembly code, you can see that the dis assembly code generated for reference and pointer is same. This means that implementation wise they are same.
Use reference as much as you can as you don’t need to use & and * confusing operators J.
