Thread: Confirming the meaning of the private/protected keywords

  1. #1
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    Confirming the meaning of the private/protected keywords

    Hey all,

    Just had a quick look through the board, and I think it's cleared it up, but I'm not 100% certain, so I wanted to ask. When working with classes, does the 'private' keyword mean that any attribute in that section of the class, is only accessible to that class, and not any derived classes? Which would lead onto protected meaning any attributes accessible by the class in which they are declared, and any derived classes.

    However, would a protected attribute be accessible by a base class? For example. Say you have a base class called Circle, and a derived class called Cylinder. Would a protected attribute in Cylinder, be accessible in Circle? I'm guessing no, but I want to clarify.

    Thanks all,

    John.

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    "When working with classes, does the 'private' keyword mean that any attribute in that section of the class, is only accessible to that class, and not any derived classes? "

    Private members aren't accessible outside the class, except for friend functions and friend classes.

    "would a protected attribute be accessible by a base class?"

    Usually, you think of whether something in the base class is accessible by the derived class, not the other way around, so I would say no, but I'm not sure. It would take about 5 minutes to test that, so I'll leave that for you to determine.
    Last edited by 7stud; 04-10-2003 at 04:39 PM.

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    Thanks dude, that's what I thought. Heh, nice when things go to plan, eh?

    John.

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    I was editing my reply when you responded, so you might want to read it again.

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    Ok, thank you again. Sorry, I'm one of those people with Impulse Refresh Disoder. I'll test that later on and see what happens.

    Thanks mate,

    --John

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    jasondoucette.com JasonD's Avatar
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    From a tutorial:

    Within the class, the keyword protected has the same effect as the keyword private. Data members are still effectively private, in that they can't be accessed by ordinary global functions, but they'll still be accessible to member functions of a derived class.

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    Thanks for the reply Jason. Oh and by the way, impressive resumé mate. Just had a quick look at your site. The 196 Palindrome record was very interesting. Hope all goes well.

    --John.

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    JasonD,

    Have you ever considered a career on Wall Street. Trading systems are becoming more and more like computer games. Speed is everything and systems are getting so complex they need the best programmers, and the pay is stratospheric.

  9. #9
    jasondoucette.com JasonD's Avatar
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    7stud, no I have not. But, you are certainly correct. The real-time software required for trading must be very demanding. I am currently in the middle of a fairly large project with a publisher who is already interested in marketing it (in fact, it was his idea, so all systems are go at the moment), so I am not currently looking for a job. I always keep an open mind to new opportunities, however, and that would certainly be interesting.

    Btw, if you are interested in real-time tradings system, you may like to take a look at the Trendax project started by Kim Schmitz.

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