In my program I have a STL set.
set<string> myStrings;
To improve the efficiency of my code I changed it to hold, only pointers. (I don't need actual string copies to be stored.)
set<string*> myStrings;
I have read that it is a good practice to substitute pointers with references when possible. (Of course, only if the actual functionality of a pointer is not needed.)
set<string&> myStrings;
The latter one gives me a lot of compiler errors, though. Why is it not possible to use references as container elements?