Pointers versus References in C++

I just had a discussion about the fact that references in C++ are useless since everything can be done with pointers and references only cause confusion when used in conjunction with pointers. There was some disbelief that references are, underneath, implemented identically to pointers and only vary syntactially. I would avoid using the phrase synatic sugar since they aren't really...uhhh...sweet.

To settle the argument, I compiled the following two code snippits:

void swapByPtr (int* a, int* b) {
	int t = *a;
	*a = *b;
	*b = t;
}

void swapByRef (int& a, int& b){
	int t = a;
	a = b;
	b = t;
}

Under GCC for Intel, they both produced the following code, less labels and a few directives:

pushl	%ebp
movl	%esp, %ebp
subl	$4, %esp
movl	8(%ebp), %eax
movl	(%eax), %eax
movl	%eax, -4(%ebp)
movl	8(%ebp), %edx
movl	12(%ebp), %eax
movl	(%eax), %eax
movl	%eax, (%edx)
movl	12(%ebp), %edx
movl	-4(%ebp), %eax
movl	%eax, (%edx)
leave
ret

However, they produce the following directives:

.globl _Z9swapByPtrPiS_
	.type	_Z9swapByPtrPiS_, @function
_Z9swapByPtrPiS_:
	code here
	.size	_Z9swapByPtrPiS_, .-_Z9swapByPtrPiS_

.globl _Z9swapByRefRiS_
	.type	_Z9swapByRefRiS_, @function
_Z9swapByRefRiS_:
	code here
	.size	_Z9swapByRefRiS_, .-_Z9swapByRefRiS_

The strange labels are created to handle function overloading. They do show differences between int* and int&. So, although the code is identical, C++ synatically differentiates them.