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From: basti@orthogo.UUCP (Sebastian Wangnick)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: friend access to base class members ???
Keywords: friend, inheritance
Message-ID: <811@orthogo.UUCP>
Date: 12 Oct 90 12:39:29 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: none
Lines: 33

I understood from my C++ book that friends have the same
access rights as member functions. Now I have some questions
on this:

Friends must be allowed to access member variables of
all their friend class' objects, whereas member functions
should only be allowed to access their own member variables?
My compiler allows member functions to access member variables
of other objects with the same class, too!?

More problematically, shouldn't friends be allowed to access
protected: base class members the same way as members can?

Look at the following code fragment:

class Base { protected: int i;	};
class D : public Base
	{
	int Get1 () { return i; }
	int Get2 (D d) { return d.i; }
	friend int Get3 (D d) { return d.i; }
	};

In my opinion, Get2 should be illegal (accessing hidden member
of other object), whereas Get3 should be allowed to do so.
But my compiler (Glockenspiel Domain/C++, cfront derivate, 1.2)
allows Get2 and flags Get3 with:

	error:	d is protected

What is your opinion about that, netters?

Sebastian Wangnick (basti@orthogo.uucp)