A question on passing by reference and member variables

[jazpearson]

I've a question on passing by reference into the constructor.

I have the following constructor, say:

aClass example(complexClass &c1, complexClass &c2, int whatever);

so, i'm passing in two complex classes. My question is, what is the best way to store these as member variables? I'm interested mainly in speed, and so when i access aClass, I want it to be as optimal as possible.

Previously, i was passing in my complex classes by pointer:

aClass example(complexClass *c1, complexClass *c2, int whatever);

and then storing the member variables as pointers also.

But how should i store the member variables when passing by reference?
Hope that makes sense. I assume there's probably no one answer that fits all, but any advice is always appreciated.

[kalgorithmist]

I am not sure if I understand you well, but here is my suggestion to what I get.

In case of passing by reference, the constructor's implementation would be just like this:

{
    someMember1 = c1;
    someMember2 = c2;
}

And in case of pointers:

{
    someMember1 = *c1;
    someMember2 = *c2;
}

I hope I didn't misunderstand you here.

[ascii]

Well to start you gave your constructor a return value and a name...