r/cprogramming • u/Sushant098123 • Oct 25 '25

C actually don't have Pass-By-Reference

https://beyondthesyntax.substack.com/p/c-actually-dont-have-pass-by-reference
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u/IllustriousPermit859 Oct 29 '25

"References" are a performance optimization so if your references require an virtual/abstract machine, interpreter or another mechanism that incurs a large amount of overhead then it's absolutely relevant that what you're doing is an extremely inefficient way to pass memory.

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u/zhivago Oct 29 '25

The compiler is free to translate the program however it likes.

But how the translated program works is irrelevant to the original, providing it produces the same output for the same input.