It's best to avoid passing non-scalars around that way. I think you're generally better served by passing the references

First of all the person you're replying to already pointed out that possibility in his post. Said this, I beg to differ with your claim and to stress that it is actually a possibility, albeit one that -as he also pointed out- turns into a necessity under certain circumstances. But generally speaking there are situations in which passing a reference is preferrable and others in which it is preferrable not to. However, stating a claim like that may easily turn into cargo culting the use of referencing and dereferencing all the time, which has already been observed around.