The "&" denotes a reference instead of a pointer to an object (In your case a constant reference).
The advantage of having a function such as
foo(string const& myname)
over
foo(string const* myname)
is that in the former case you are guaranteed that myname is non-null, since C++ does not allow NULL references. Since you are passing by reference, the object is not copied, just like if you were passing a pointer.
Your second example:
const string &GetMethodName() { ... }
Would allow you to return a constant reference to, for example, a member variable. This is useful if you do not wish a copy to be returned, and again be guaranteed that the value returned is non-null. As an example, the following allows you direct, read-only access:
class A
{
public:
int bar() const {return someValue;}
//Big, expensive to copy class
}
class B
{
public:
A const& getA() { return mA;}
private:
A mA;
}
void someFunction()
{
B b = B();
//Access A, ability to call const functions on A
//No need to check for null, since reference is guaranteed to be valid.
int value = b.getA().bar();
}
You have to of course be careful to not return invalid references.
Compilers will happily compile the following (depending on your warning level and how you treat warnings)
int const& foo()
{
int a;
//This is very bad, returning reference to something on the stack. This will
//crash at runtime.
return a;
}
Basically, it is your responsibility to ensure that whatever you are returning a reference to is actually valid.
Best Answer
From the first ISO C++ standard
C++98
, this is described in2.5/ Alternative tokens [lex.digraph]
:So it's been around since the earliest days of the C++ standardisation process. The reason so few people are aware of it is likely because the main use case was for people operating in environments where the full character set wasn't necessarily available. For example (and this is stretching my memory), the baseline EBCDIC character set on the IBM mainframes did not have the square bracket characters
[
and]
.