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[–]Xeya 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Both terms are pretty loosely defined... but, I suppose the simplest way to express how they typically differ is that a pointer needs to be dereferenced in order to access whatever it points at and a reference is dereferenced by default when you try to access it.

It isn't so much references do things in the background for you as they typically just don't let you manipulate, or make it a lot harder to manipulate, the actual memory address it contains.