What is a good way to think about C++ references?

Question

I've been programming C, mainly in an embedded environment, for years now and have a perfectly good mental model of pointers - I don't have to explicitly think about how to use them, am 100% comfortable with pointer arithmetic, arrays of pointers, pointers-to-pointers etc.

I've written very little C++ and really don't have a good way of thinking about references. I've been advised in the past to "think of them as pointers that can't be NULL" but this question shows that that is far from the full story.

So for more experienced C++ programmers - how do you think of references? Do you think of them as a special sort of pointer, or as their own thing entirely? What's a good way for a C programmer to get their head round the concept?

Answer 1

I've get used to think about references as an alias for main object.

EDIT(Due to request in comments):

I used to think about reference as kind of aliasing is because it behaves in the exact same way as the original variable without any need to make an extra manipulation in order to affect the variable referenced.

Answer 2

For me, when I see a pointer in code (as a local variable in a function or a member on a class), I have to think about

1. Is the pointer null, or is it valid
2. Who created the object it points to (is it me?, have I done it yet?)
3. Who is responsible for deleting the object
4. Does it always point to the same object

I don't have to think about any of that stuff if it's a reference, it's somebody else's problem (i.e. think of a reference as an SEP Field for a pointer)

P.S. Yes, it's probably still my problem, just not right now