Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!gatech!gt-eedsp!baud
From: baud@gt-eedsp.UUCP (Kurt Baudendistel)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Friend specifier considered harmful
Message-ID: <424@gt-eedsp.UUCP>
Date: 2 Sep 88 13:53:54 GMT
References: <61@cybaswan.UUCP>
Reply-To: baud@gt-eedsp.UUCP (Kurt Baudendistel)
Organization: School of Electrical Engineering, Ga. Tech, Atlanta, GA  30332
Lines: 18

In article <61@cybaswan.UUCP> eeartym@cybaswan.UUCP (Dr R.Artym eleceng ) 
writes:

>	So far I haven't come across any situation where friends are really
>necessary ---  most cases seem to derive from a lack of object-oriented
>structuring, or the requirements can be met with inline functions.

the trick is that this may be true in the general case, but as with most
things in c++, decisions are colored by the magic concept of *efficiency*.
it is often in the programmers' best interests to use friends for this
reason when creating related classes.  a good example is vector and
matrix classes.

-- 
Kurt Baudendistel [GRA McClellan]
Georgia Tech, School of Electrical Engineering, Atlanta, GA  30332
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