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On Sep 9, 5:05*pm, Stuart Redmann <DerTop...@web.de> wrote:
> On 9 Sep., Goran wrote:
>
> > > > There's no reference in your code. Clearly, ifile is not a reference
> > > > (to a variable), it IS a variable.
>
> On Sep 9, Asger-P wrote:
>
> > > if it was an int or so I would have called it that, I just
> > > didn't know You used the same name for classes as well.
>
> On 9 Sep., Goran wrote:
>
> > What, you mean, like primitive/reference type in Java? Naaaaah... In
> > my mind, there's no such distinction in C++. "int" can pretty easily
> > be viewed as a class, only, it's full of operators .
>
> Gosh, I didn't know that the Java community used different names for
> variables depending on whether a variable is of a primitive type or of
> a class type.

I don't __know__ that they do (or how many of them). Please don't hold
me on that.

Goran.

On Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:07:25 +0200, Asger-P wrote:

> In my head "ifile" is the name that refer to the instance
> of the ifstream class, so it kind of an reference, of course
> I know it is not the "reference kind" reference, You see my
> problem.

In C and C++, you have primitive types (basically numbers; integer and
floating-point types), aggregates (structures, unions and, in C++,
classes), arrays, pointers and (in C++) references (which are basically
pointers under the hood).

In Java, you have primitive types and pointers (references) to class
types. You can't have a pointer to a primitive type, nor can you have an
instance of a class type other than via a pointer/reference.

Hence, class types tend to be referred to as reference types. Assignment
copies the reference, not the object to which it refers; for the latter,
you need to use the .clone() method.

Neither C nor C++ have this restriction. Pointers/references aren't
required for aggregate types, nor are they restricted to them.