Not quite. The basic idea is the same, but one significant difference is that C# references can be null . So you cannot rely on a C# reference pointing to a valid object. In that respect a C# reference is more like a C++ pointer than a C++ reference. If you try to use a null reference, a NullReferenceException is thrown.

For example, look at the following method:

void displayStringLength( string s )
{
Console.WriteLine( "String is length {0}", s.Length );
}
The problem with this method is that it will throw a NullReferenceException if called like this:

string s = null;
displayStringLength( s );
Of course for some situations you may deem a NullReferenceException to be a perfectly acceptable outcome, but in this case it might be better to re-write the method like this:

void displayStringLength( string s )
{
if( s == null )
Console.WriteLine( "String is null" );
else
Console.WriteLine( "String is length {0}", s.Length );
}