Thread: Can a inner class have a member of outer class type?

A defines a structure and B defines some presentation, read- and write functions to it. Therefore B uses some state (member) variables which shall not be member of A, so it needs to be an own class.

I could of course just do

Code:

class A
{

};

class B
{
      A mA;    // VS complains that A is undefined
}

...which would rather be the same, at least for my. Why not for the compiler?

I would like to use the inner class because this way it's in the namespace defined by the outer class.

Originally Posted by pheres

B uses some state (member) variables which shall not be member of A, so it needs to be an own class.

That means B's members functions depend on each other, so B needs it's own member variables. But the can't be part of A because A is needed by legacy code as well and this code relies on the memory layout of A.

I guess there is no solution to the original problem and I've to split A and B.