Pointer address as reference in function

Question

I've got one general question, why can't I pass the the pointer's address as a reference?

void domdom(string &foo)
{
 foo = "";
}

string fooso = "blabal";
string* p_fooso = fooso;

domdom(p_fooso); // <-- why is that not possible? And what should I pass to be able to modify foosoo?

I know I could change the function domdom to accept (string* foo), but is it also possible to modify the string fooso in the function by using the pointer to it and the given function?

Answer 1

why can't i pass the the pointer's address as a reference?

Because that's how the language is defined.

Instead, you can dereference the pointer to get a reference to the string:

domdom(*p_fooso);

or, pass the actual object directly:

domdom(fooso);

---

Also note that string* p_fooso = fooso; doesn't compile. You have to write string* p_fooso = &fooso;.

Answer 2

Just declare p_fooso as a string reference type. You might want to rename variable as r_fooso!

string& r_fooso=fooso;