In C++, friendship is not inherited. If a base class has a friend function, then the function doesn’t become a friend of the derived class(es).
For example, following program prints error because show() which is a friend of base class A tries to access private data of derived class B.
#include <iostream> using namespace std; class A { protected : int x; public : A() { x = 0;} friend void show(); }; class B: public A { public : B() : y (0) {} private : int y; }; void show() { B b; cout << "The default value of A::x = " << b.x; // Can't access private member declared in class 'B' cout << "The default value of B::y = " << b.y; } int main() { show(); getchar (); return 0; } |
Thanks to Venki for the above code and explanation.
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