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C++: How would you declare and initialize reference to a data member?


How would you declare and initialize reference to a data member?


Sometimes we may need to declare a data member which is a reference to another data member of the class as shown below:

class A
{
   public :
      char *p ;
      char *&rp ;
} ;

We can't initialize a reference to a data member at the time of declaration. It should be initialized using 'memberwise initialization as shown below.

#include <iostream.h>
class A
{
   public :
      char *p ;
      char *&rp ;
      A( ) : rp ( p )
      {
         p = "" ;
      }
 
      A ( char *s ) : rp ( p )
      {
         p = s ;
      }
} ;
 
void main( )
{
   A a ( "abcd" ) ;
   cout << a.rp ;
}

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