A reference, unlike a pointer, always points to the same memory address(*); so the reference is immutable even if the cell contents it points to are not. That's the difference between a reference and a pointer, by definition; not just the different syntax.
Back in the day, that was one of the major selling points of the new language Java over the more common C and C++. Developers don't learn about it nowadays because changing pointers is practically never done outside the most esoteric parts of system programming.
(*) Semantically, at least. The compiler is free to relocate the value to a different memory position in a way transparent to the programmer.
Yes, if the reference is immutable. The main problem with pointers is ad-hoc memory management anyway.
The references are not immutable in this case.
A reference, unlike a pointer, always points to the same memory address(*); so the reference is immutable even if the cell contents it points to are not. That's the difference between a reference and a pointer, by definition; not just the different syntax.
Back in the day, that was one of the major selling points of the new language Java over the more common C and C++. Developers don't learn about it nowadays because changing pointers is practically never done outside the most esoteric parts of system programming.
(*) Semantically, at least. The compiler is free to relocate the value to a different memory position in a way transparent to the programmer.
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