is object name a pointer?

[veryrandomname]

I'm a beginner in C++ and i'm confused about object name.
let's pretend that there's code like this:

class blaclass{
public:
void dosomething(){cout << "doing something"};
}
 

and i want to make a function that takes blaclass object as a parameter and returns blaclass object.and i don't know which is the right way to do it.

1.

blaclass veryrandomfunction(blaclass a){
a.dosomething()
blaclass blaobj2;
return blaobj2;
}
 

2.

blaclass& veryrandomfunction(blaclass& a){
a.dosomething()
blaclass blaobj2;
return blaobj2;
}
 

is way 1 right or is way 2 right? in other terms, is object name(identifier) a pointer?

[veryrandomname]

problem solved
i didn't know the c++ feature that you can pass '&' after the parameter type to use it as a reference.
if what i remember is right, C didn't have that
yea, C++ is kewl.

[Ganon11]

Just for the sake of my own satisfaction...

I'm fairly sure that declaring the object inside a function is not the right way to go. It becomes a local variable that (I think?) will become deallocated after the function ends, so while you may be returning the address of the object, that address will be meaningless after the function, as the memory there is deallocated.

Instead, you should use a pointer to create an object in memory that will NOT be deallocated after the function - you can then return the pointer, or the value of the pointer (i.e. the object), and the object will still exist.