Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!pantor!richard
From: richard@pantor.UUCP (Richard Sargent)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: information hiding
Message-ID: <14.UUL1.3#5109@pantor.UUCP>
Date: 29 Jun 89 15:23:51 GMT
References: <7709@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Organization: Pansophic Systems Inc, Graphics Product Company
Lines: 23

Regarding the question of C++ header files containing the public and private
information both, the information *has* to be there for the compiler.

However, you can alleviate the problems caused by extracting only the public
portions and publishing those as adjunct to man pages or whatever. This can
be fairly automated via judicious use of "#if !defined(EXTRACT)" directives
throughout and use 'make' and the preprocessor to fairly automatically 
extract the public portions. Of course, you can write your own utilities to 
do whatever you want ...

Naturally, this does not solve the 'problem' of someone attempting to learn
more about a class than they should, but I doubt anything will, short of a
completely closed and regulated programming/development environment (and you
thought editor wars were extreme!). It will, however, allow people to easily
learn what they do need to know without 'burdening' them with the stuff they
shouldn't know.

As with everything involving C/C++, it all comes down to discipline in the 
end.


Richard Sargent                   Internet: richard@pantor.UUCP
Systems Analyst                   UUCP:     uunet!pantor!richard