Can reference guarantee non-empty input?

Previously, when discussing the difference between pointer and reference, one may say that the argument passed as reference can guarantee non-empty input. We may just simply take it for granted, but it does not hold for all cases.

For instance,

   1: class TempClass

   2: {

   3: public:

   4:     int member;

   5: };

   6:  

   7: void TestFunction(TempClass& input)

   8: {

   9:     TempClass* pInput = &input;

  10:     if(pInput == NULL)

  11:         throw;

  12:     int value = input.member;

  13: }

  14:  

  15: TempClass* p = NULL;

  16: TestFunction(*p);

  17:  

What happens for the above code? The "input" is a null-reference.

After reading c++ standard, it can be found that dereferencing a null pointer has undefined behavior, so, the above code has broken c++ standard already and is not suggested to use.

"[Note: in particular, a null reference cannot exist in a well-defined program, because the only way to create such a reference would be to bind it to the "object" obtained by dereferencing a null pointer, which causes undefined behavior]"