question about a struct pointer parameter

[vanalex]

Hello everybody!
Recently while i was experimenting with some code written in c++ i noticed something that confused me a bit. In that code i had to deal with 2 structs :

struct date
{
    string day;
    int month; 
    int dday;
   int year; };

and the other struct

struct note
{
     date d;
     string notice;  };

I noticed that when i was passing in a function i built, an instance of note struct as a pointer parameter my program kept crashing continuously, although compiler wasn't complaining. To make myself clear :

void myFunction(note* n, ...other parameters...)
{
    cout << n->d.day << endl;
   cout << n->d.month << endl;
    etc...
}

I'm sure that my program crashed because of that piece of code

n->d.day

i'm sure because i tested it in debug mode.
When i wrote my function differently i had no problem running my program :

 void myFunction(note& n, ..other parameters...)
{
    cout << n.d.day << endl;
    cout << n.d.month << endl;
  etc...
  }

Has anyone got an idea why the pointer parameter and the arrow
caused that problem? Looking forward to reading your ideas and thoughts...Thank you in advance for your time...

vanalex