this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2026
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Most of the time you pass by reference for more outputs, or by const ref to avoid copying a big-ass data structure (which is not always straightforward, with structures smaller than a pointer, which are pretty big in 64 bits architecture, you lose more to the ref overhead than to the copy IIRC)
Another reason I commonly see: to change the structure / "main pointer" to a data structure (esp during freeing and cleanup).