Friends and Members

Ok, so I googled to see if I can see what the difference is between friends and members of a class, but all sites seem a little hazy....

I think a friend has all the power of a member, so why delcare it as a friend and not as a member? and what is the difference in declaring a friend from a member?

Thanks!

Friends and members are not the same thing.
You can declare a class or a function (B) or a function (B) or another class (B) a friend of one class (A), in which case that function (B), class (B) or class member (B) will have full access to the class (A), including privately declared data.

ok... I think I follow. what is the difference between the declaration statements of a friend and of a member...

Well, as I mentioned, they're not the same.

Code:

---

class foo
{
    friend class foo2; // Friend declaration
    static void foo(); // Member declaration
};

class foo2
{
public:
    void foo() { foo::foo(); } // Legal since foo2 is a friend of foo.
};

---

ok- lets say I want to write the following friend statement as a member function instead

Code:

---

friend Pairs operator *(const Pairs& f, const Pairs& s);

---

will it be something like

Code:

---

void Pairs operator*();

---

Im still really confused about friends and members

No, the friend keyword is a keyword applied to a declaration in cases of functions.
Define your function as

Code:

---

Pairs operator *(const Pairs& f, const Pairs& s);

---

And inside the class, add the friend declaration:

Code:

---

friend Pairs operator *(const Pairs& f, const Pairs& s);

---

The operator * will now have access to the class internals.

A member is (as it says) part of the class. A friend is not part of the class, it belongs to something else entirely (or nothing at all), but the class has granted it access to the data.

Your operator * will still return a Pairs element (I'm assuming -- it did before), it certainly won't return void. And you will still need to specify the right hand side of * -- you have to multiply your object by something.