Friend cannot inherit from private subclass

**MWAAAHAAA** · 11-18-2006

I am trying to inherit a subclass, which is declared as a private member of another class. Although the Friend is declared as a friend of Class, my compiler spits out the following error:

Class.h:5: error: ‘class Class::SubClass’ is private
Friend.h:3: error: within this context

Could anyone explain to me what I am getting wrong here? BTW, the compiler I am using is gcc 4.1.2.

Class.h, the class with the private subclass that I am trying to inherit:

Code:

class Class
{
    private:
        class SubClass
        {
            public:
                void A();
        };
    public:
        friend class Friend;
};

Friend.h, the class that is trying to inherit the private subclass:

Code:

#include "Class.h"

class Friend: public Class::SubClass
{
};

**Mario F.** · 11-18-2006

You are trying to inherit from a privately accessible class. The error really is just that. No matter what you do with friendship to try to go around this rule, the sad truth is that you can't.

The derivation list is in the same scope as of the class Friend definition (from what is visible from your code, the global scope). SubClass is private to Class. You can't "see" it.

**MWAAAHAAA** · 11-19-2006

But a declaring a certain class as friend automatically makes all private entries visible to that class (i.e. as if they were public to that class). According to this logic this should make the class inheritable by friend.

**Mario F.** · 11-19-2006

Lets look at the first line of your Friend class definition.

Code:

class Friend: public Class::SubClass

A class definition starts with the keyword class followed by the name of the class. This is not new to you. But what about what's comming next?

Everything starting with (and including) the colon is called a derivation list. And you should look at it separately from your class. The derivation list needs to fully qualify the class that will be inherited.

Code:

: public Class::SubClass

SubClass is indeed in the scope of Class (because classes also define a scope). But it is a private member of Class. It is not visible to the derivation list. In other words, Class doesn't expose SubClass as part of its interface.

You cannot derive from a private nested class.

**CornedBee** · 11-19-2006

Still a rather vague explanation.

In short, the base-clause (the standard's name for the derivation list) is not part of the class body, and it's only the class body that gains access to private and protected members.
See 11.4 §2 of the C++ standard. It explicitely mentions this particular case and provides this example:

Code:

         class A {
                  class B { };
                  friend class X;
          };
          class X : A::B {         // ill-formed: A::B cannot be accessed
                                   //  in the base-clause for X

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