Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!necntc!necis!mrst!sdti!turner
From: turner@sdti.UUCP (Prescott K. Turner)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Friend specifier considered harmful
Summary: 'acquaintance' specifier
Message-ID: <311@sdti.UUCP>
Date: 15 Sep 88 17:18:24 GMT
References: <29433@bbn.COM> <8180@alice.UUCP>
Reply-To: turner@sdti.uucp (Prescott K. Turner, Jr.)
Organization: Software Development Technologies, Sudbury MA
Lines: 24

In article <8180@alice.UUCP>, shopiro@alice.UUCP (Jonathan Shopiro) writes:
>In article <29433@bbn.COM>, lpringle@bbn.com (Lewis Pringle) writes:
>> The use of friends is not exacly what you want.  Perhaps if in
>> specifying a friend,you didn't give blanket access to the given class,
>> but instead to just an explicitly stated set of members?
>Good idea!  In fact you can do exactly that, for example
>...
>Then Foo:bar() can access priv in any Foe object, but Foo::baz() cannot.

No, that's not what he was asking for.  It was for the ability to specify
that a function could get at some of a class's private members, but not
all.  'Protected' already gives us the ability to specify that some members
are more private than others.  What's lacking is a way to designate a
function as something in between a run-of-the-mill function and a close
friend.  How about an 'acquaintance' keyword which works like 'friend'
but which provides access only to protected and not private members?

Not that I'm an advocate of this idea -- just attempting to home in on
what was desired.
--
Prescott K. Turner, Jr.
Software Development Technologies, Inc.
375 Dutton Rd., Sudbury, MA 01776 USA        (508) 443-5779
UUCP:...genrad!mrst!sdti!turner