storage for reference variable

[voorugonda prashanth]

memory for reference variable will be allocated or not? if yes,where does the reference variable get stored( stack or heap)? Thanks in advance. Prashanth.v -- modified at 3:07 Wednesday 3rd May, 2006

[Cedric Moonen]

What do you mean exactly ? Post some code to illustrate your question.

[voorugonda prashanth]

this question asked me in interview. i donot have any code. question is where does the reference variable get stored(stack or heap)? Prashanth.v

[toxcct]

a reference is nothing more than a dereferenced pointer. when you create a reference variable, you create a variable first (before looking at its type), so the program NEED to store it somewhere in memory to keep its information.

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[Justin Tay]

Isn't this an implementation detail? For example int a = 10; int &b = a; The compiler doesn't have to have memory for b, it can get the appropriate memory location from the symbol table. Of course when not possible to implement in this way compilers use a pointer to implement the reference.

[voorugonda prashanth]

solution please. whether it gets stored in stack or heap?

[Justin Tay]

Unfortunately I think you should have clarified in the interview what was meant by reference variable. Say you had code like int a = 10; int &b = a; In this case it's not stored anywhere. The compiler just knows what you are referring to. If you had a function that looks like say DoSomething(int &b); int a = 10; DoSomething(a); Then the compiler has to implement the reference as passing a pointer to 'a' on the parameter list. Say this calling convention passes all arguments to functions on the stack, would this be considered storing in the stack?

[kumar_mk]

no memory is allocated to a reference variable. not in stack nor in heap.