Java References vs C++ Pointers and References

Semantically Java references are similar to C/C++ pointers.

Syntactically Java references are similar to C++ references.

	Java references	C/C++ pointers	C++ references
Points at objects	Yes	Yes	Yes
Initialized with `new`	Yes	Yes	No
Can be null	Yes	Yes	No
Can be updated to point at a different object	Yes	Yes	No
Pass by value	Yes	Yes	No
Is called "reference"	Yes	No	Yes
Is implicitly dereferenced	Yes	No	Yes

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