Post History

C does have references, but it does not have pass by reference.

A reference is simply an expression that references an object (object here is meant in the general sense, not in the OO sense; for example, a variable is an object). In C, references are implemented using pointers.

However C does *not* have pass by reference. Note that pass by reference is *not* just the ability to pass references to functions (C certainly can do that), but refers to a mechanism by which the compiler turns an expression referring to an object (in C speak, an lvalue) used as argument to a function into a reference to that object named by that function's parameter.

C doesn't have that; if you want to pass a reference to an object you always have to be explicit about it, by passing a pointer (which then is passed by value) and dereferencing it in the called function.

C++ does have pass by reference via its reference types. Other languages allow pass by reference via special syntax (like `var` parameters in Pascal) or do it for all parameters (e.g. FORTRAN 77).

Note that pass by reference is mainly a syntactic thing (it makes a difference in language ability only in languages that don't allow passing references in any other way, like FORTRAN 77).