refref

Refref is a terminology encountered mainly in introductory discussions of reference semantics. It is not a formal construct in any mainstream programming language, but rather a shorthand for the idea of a reference that points to another reference. In this sense, refref serves as a didactic device to illustrate double indirection and aliasing.

Etymology: The term blends the word reference (ref) with itself, highlighting the compositional nature of indirection. Its use is informal and often confined to tutorials, blog posts, and lecture notes.

In programming theory, refref is used to discuss how a reference value can be stored, passed, or returned as a value that itself references another object. This helps learners understand concepts such as pointers to pointers, handle-based references, or wrapper objects that forward operations to underlying references.

In data modeling and databases, the idea of a reference to a reference can appear when modeling nested foreign keys or proxies. However, in practice, database schemas use explicit references and do not implement a language feature called refref.

See also: reference, indirection, aliasing, pointer, reference wrapper.