Editing Reference (computer science) (section)

==Use==
References are widely used in [[computer programming|programming]], especially to efficiently pass large or mutable data as [[argument (computer science)|arguments]] to [[subroutine|procedures]], or to share such data among various uses.  In particular, a reference may point to a variable or record that contains references to other data.  This idea is the basis of [[indirect addressing]] and of many [[linked data structure]]s, such as [[linked list]]s. References increase flexibility in where objects can be stored, how they are allocated, and how they are passed between areas of [[code]]. As long as one can access a reference to the data, one can access the data through it, and the data itself need not be moved. They also make sharing of data between different code areas easier; each keeps a reference to it.

References can cause significant complexity in a program, partially due to the possibility of [[dangling reference|dangling]] and [[wild reference]]s and partially because the [[topology]] of data with references is a [[directed graph]], whose analysis can be quite complicated. Nonetheless, references are still simpler to analyze than [[Pointer (computer programming)|pointer]]s due to the absence of [[pointer arithmetic]].

The mechanism of references, if varying in implementation, is a fundamental programming language feature common to nearly all modern programming languages. Even some languages that support no direct use of references have some internal or implicit use. For example, the [[Evaluation strategy|call by reference]] calling convention can be implemented with either explicit or implicit use of references.