Reference

In computer science, a reference is a value that enables a program to directly access a particular data item, such as a variable or a record, in the computer's memory or in some other storage device. The reference is said to refer to the data item, and accessing that data is called dereferencing the reference. A reference is distinct from the data itself. Typically, a reference is the physical address of where the data is stored in memory or in t... more

In computer science, a reference is a value that enables a program to directly access a particular data item, such as a variable or a record, in the computer's memory or in some other storage device. The reference is said to refer to the data item, and accessing that data is called dereferencing the reference. A reference is distinct from the data itself. Typically, a reference is the physical address of where the data is stored in memory or in the storage device. For this reason, a reference is often called a pointer or address, and is said to point to the data. However a reference may also be the offset (difference) between the datum's address and some fixed "base" address, or an index into an array. The concept of reference must not be confused with other values (keys or identifiers) that uniquely identify the data item, but give access to it only through a non-trivial lookup operation in some table data structure. References are widely used in programming, especially to... less