Passing Reference to Pointers

Question

I'm passing references to pointers in order to use virtual functions.

Option 1 does what I intended and calls the appropriate derived class virtual function. Option 2 does not, suggesting no reference was passed. Since this does compile, then what does & mean in this context if not pass by reference?

1.
Derived aDerived;
Derived *pDerived = &aDerived;

2.
Derived *pDerived = &Derived();

Answer 1

In option 2 you are attempting to take the address of an rvalue . This should fail to compile with:

error: lvalue required as unary '&' operand

Check this live example.