In C++, both references and pointers provide a way to access data indirectly, but they have different use cases and properties. Pointers are variables that hold memory addresses. They are more flexible and powerful than references, but also more prone to error. Pointers can be reassigned to point to different variables during their lifetime. Pointers can be incremented or decremented (pointer arithmetic), allowing us to iterate through an array of data. Pointers can be set to NULL or nullptr , representing a pointer that doesn't point to anything. Pointers can have multiple levels of indirection, such as pointer to pointer ( int **p ). Here's an example of using pointers: int a = 5 ; int * p = & a ; // p points to a * p = 10 ; // a is now 10 p = nullptr ; // p does not point to anything now References , on the other hand, are like "alias" for another variable. They are safer and easier to use than pointers, but less flexible. References must be
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