How do you update a data file in c plus plus with a reference?

Answer 1

You cannot store references. A reference is nothing more than an alias, an alternate name for an existing variable or constant. References are primarily used when passing variables to functions such that the function can operate upon the variable itself -- known as passing by reference. The function refers to the variable by a different name, an alias, but it is the same variable. By contrast, when passing a variable by value the function uses a copy of that variable, assigning the variable's value to that copy.

References are often confused with pointers, primarily because C uses the term to mean a pointer (hence the term, dereferencing). But in C++ a reference is a separate entity altogether. Unlike a reference, a pointer is a variable in its own right, one that can be used to store a memory address. Since a pointer has storage, you can store a pointer in a data file. However, in reality you are only storing the pointer's value -- a memory address -- not an actual pointer.

Pointers and references are similar insofar as they can both refer to an object. A pointer does this by storing the memory address of the object, while a reference refers directly to the object itself. Thus if you have a pointer and a reference to the same object, the pointer's value is exactly the same as the address of the reference. Therefore the only way you can store a reference is by storing the object being referred to, not the reference itself.