Container of references / non-nullable pointers

Question

I usually use references instead of pointers when I want NULL not to be possible. Since we can't have containers of references, what should be the type of a container that contains only non-null pointers?

Answer 1

If you were to use a container of pointers, you'd just use a container of pointers, don't place any NULL pointers in it, and move on.

However, you can still have a container of references if you use std::reference_wrapper. For example:

#include <vector>
#include <iostream>
#include <functional>

int main()
{
    int x = 5;

    std::vector<std::reference_wrapper<int>> v;
    v.push_back(std::reference_wrapper<int>(x));

    x = 6;

    std::cout << v[0];  // 6
}

Live demo