guix:
I know but other functions using referenced parameters doesn't need the '&' in front of parameters..like this:
sscanf is a C function. References were introduced in C++.
References are just a bit of syntactic sugar round pointers, aren't they?
To a certain extent, although since you can't change the "underlying" pointer the compiler lets you use references where it wouldn't let you use pointers (eg. for things that are const).