friend-class – Tarik Billa

Declaring a namespace as a friend of a class

January 8, 2024 by Tarik

No, it’s not possible befriend a namespace. If nothing else, it would constitute a “security breach,” as namespaces can be extended anywhere. So anyone could add an arbitrary function to the namespace and access the class’s non-public data. The closest you can get is the solution you propose, making those functions static members of a … Read more

‘friend’ functions and

May 25, 2023 by Tarik

Note: You might want to look at the operator overloading FAQ. Binary operators can either be members of their left-hand argument’s class or free functions. (Some operators, like assignment, must be members.) Since the stream operators’ left-hand argument is a stream, stream operators either have to be members of the stream class or free functions. … Read more