How is this even possible

[EwCjE3v7]

Hi there,
I just came around this and don't understand how a const reference can do this with out.

  const int &ri = 0;

How is that possible?
Without the const I get an error but with const I don't. Why?
Thanks

[Hippogriff]

I have never seen this used before but this topic might be able to answer some questions about it.
http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/beginner/19479/

This quote from guestgulkan seems to sum it up pretty well.

You can't take the address of a literal (so the address of a literal cannot be assigned to a pointer).

references are not pointers (in the c++ sense) and behave differently with regards to literals.
You can bind a reference to a literal because
a temporary variable is created from the literal and the and it is this temporary variable that is used by the the reference. Temporary variables are constant.

[EwCjE3v7]

thanks James
i had something like that in my book but forgot about it
thanks