Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!ulysses!hector!ekrell
From: ekrell@hector.UUCP (Eduardo Krell)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Can we hide the private part of a class ?
Message-ID: <10688@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Date: 4 Oct 88 00:52:52 GMT
References: <1358@stratus> <1988Sep29.044111.16104@utzoo.uucp> <4193@polya.Stanford.EDU> <1988Oct2.045604.17456@utzoo.uucp> <5922@june.cs.washington.edu>
Sender: netnews@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com
Reply-To: ekrell@hector.UUCP (Eduardo Krell)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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In article <5922@june.cs.washington.edu> david@uw-june.UUCP (David Callahan) writes:

>Changing the size or position of private elements changes only the 
>offsets of the public elements. These could be treated as external 
>variables and bound at link time rather than compile time.

This is a bad idea as it would break all the C++ <-> C compatibility.
Imagine a C++ program calling stat() and then trying to access the
elements of the stat structure returned by the kernel ...
    
Eduardo Krell                   AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ

UUCP: {att,decvax,ucbvax}!ulysses!ekrell  Internet: ekrell@ulysses.att.com