True. In any case references solve only half of the problem because it lets you state "this function will not take a null pointer". You still cannot say "this function may take a null pointer" unless you use a very unusual convention of saying that any pointer argument may take a null pointer.
I don't find that convention unusual. That's how I (and everyone at my company) writes code every day. If an argument is a pointer, that means it may be null. If it may not be null, it should be a reference.
