I don’t think references are variables: you can’t modify them, and AFAIR you can’t have pointers to them, with the possible but unlikely exception of non-static member references.
An int& reference is just as much of a variable as int* const would be (a const pointer to a non-const int). “Variable” might be a misnomer here, but it takes just as much memory as any other pointer.
I don’t think references are variables: you can’t modify them, and AFAIR you can’t have pointers to them, with the possible but unlikely exception of non-static member references.
An
int&
reference is just as much of a variable asint* const
would be (a const pointer to a non-const int). “Variable” might be a misnomer here, but it takes just as much memory as any other pointer.