Passing by reference in C

Question

If C does not support passing a variable by reference, why does this work?

#include 

void f(int *j) {
  (*j)++;
}

int main() {
  int i = 20;         


        

Answer 1

pointers and references are two different thigngs.

A couple of things I have not seen mentioned.

A pointer is the address of something. A pointer can be stored and copied like any other variable. It thus have a size.

A reference should be seen as an ALIAS of something. It does not have a size and cannot be stored. It MUST reference something, ie. it cannot be null or changed. Well, sometimes the compiler needs to store the reference as a pointer, but that is an implementation detail.

With references you don't have the issues with pointers, like ownership handling, null checking, de-referencing on use.