auto const and references

The auto keyword by itself represents a value type, similar to int or char. It can be modified with the const keyword and the & symbol to represent a const type or a reference type, respectively. These modifiers can be combined.

In this example, s is a value type (its type will be inferred as std::string), so each iteration of the for loop copies a string from the vector into s.

std::vector<std::string> strings = { "stuff", "things", "misc" };
for (auto s : strings) {
    std::cout << s << std::endl;
}

If the body of the loop modifies s (such as by calling s.append(" and stuff")), only this copy will be modified, not the original member of strings.

On the other hand, if s is declared with auto& it will be a reference type (inferred to be std::string&), so on each iteration of the loop it will be assigned a reference to a string in the vector:

for (auto& s : strings) {
    std::cout << s << std::endl;
}

In the body of this loop, modifications to s will directly affect the element of strings that it references.

Finally, if s is declared const auto&, it will be a const reference type, meaning that on each iteration of the loop it will be assigned a const reference to a string in the vector:

for (const auto& s : strings) {
    std::cout << s << std::endl;
}

Within the body of this loop, s cannot be modified (i.e. no non-const methods can be called on it).

When using auto with range-based for loops, it is generally good practice to use const auto& if the loop body will not modify the structure being looped over, since this avoids unnecessary copies.