Could someone explain to me what the "reference/ref" command is in the GECK?

[tnade711]

I can't quite rap my head around it for some reason. I've been told its "A Reference type variable stores a game object, of any type (item, NPC, door, container, a piece of wall, etc.)."

 

Now this may sound obvious at first but I've read over coding containing reference values i.e. ref rcontainer, set rcontainer to getcontainer. All it looks like in that line of code is that it renamed the command getcontainer. Could someone please explain a bit more indepth the reference function and perhaps an example of it if possible.