Member variable as reference

Question

What is the advantage of declaring a member variable as a reference? I saw how people did this, and do not understand why.

Answer 1

One useful case is when you do not have access to the constructor of this object, but you do not want to work with indirection through a pointer. For example, if a class Adoes not have an open constructor, and your class wants to accept an instance Ain its constructor, you want to save A&. It also guarantees link initialization.

Answer 2

An element reference is useful when you need to have access to another object without copying it.

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Answer 3

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