Re: need for friend function

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Thu, 6 Dec 2007 03:49:51 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
<ab946ad3-1758-4d6e-83df-c4d6e93c5284@w40g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>
On Dec 5, 3:26 pm, "Victor Bazarov" <v.Abaza...@comAcast.net> wrote:

ManicQin wrote:

[..]
Why strousrup is advising not to use friends?

      ^^^^^^^^^
I am not sure who (or what) that is.


A misspelling of Stroustrup?

Friendship goes against the data/implementation hiding
principle. If you make something private, that's really only
for you to see.


I don't think that Stroustrup advises unconditionally against
friends. If he had felt that there was never a reason to use a
friend, he wouldn't have added the concept to the language.

The important thing, I think, is to consider friends as part of
the interface of your class. Don't (normally) make anything a
friend that isn't implemented as part of your class
implementation. Used correctly, friends increase encapsulation
and hiding.

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