[subhasish]

Even experienced C++ programmers who have prior experience with C tend to use pointers excessively whereas references may be a better choice. Pointers may result in bugs like the following:

bool isValid( const Date *pDate);

void f()
{
	Date *p = new Date(); //default: current date

	//...many lines of code

	delete p;		//p is now a “dangling pointer” 
	bool valid = isValid(p); //oops! undefined behavior
	p = NULL;
	valid = isValid(p)	//ops! null pointer dereferencing; 	
					//most likely will lead to a crash
}

The use of references eliminates the notorious bugs related to pointers: null pointer assignment and dangling pointer dereferencing, since a reference is always bound to a valid object:

bool isValid( const Date& date);  //reference version

void f()
{
	Date date; //default: current date

	//...many lines of code

	bool valid = isValid(date); //always safe
	date += 100; //add 100 days
	valid = isValid(date)	//always safe					
}