why doesn't C++ allow rebinding a reference?

c++

Solution

Stroustrup's The Design & Evolution of C++ answers most questions of this kind. In this case, see the section §3.7 References:

I had in the past been bitten by Algol68 references where `r1=r2` can either assign through `r1` to the object referred to or assign a new reference value to `r1` (re-binding `r1`) depending on the type of `r2`. I wanted to avoid such problems in C++. If you want to do more complicated pointer manipulation in C++, you can use pointers.

Problem

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