Hi I very recently did the C++ online Quiz and was surprised to find that my answer (1) to the following question (below) was incorrect. Is there something I am missing here, or is the answer incorrect. I thought this was the point of Private. "Always inaccessible regardless or derivation access". Apparently (3) in the correct answer! according to the quiz!
The private member in derived class 1) Cannot be inherited 2) Can be inherited at all instances 3) Can be inherited only if the derived class is inheriting from base class with private access level 4) None of the Above
Total Answers and Comments: 4
Last Update: September 29, 2008 Asked by: BronzeBill
I think you are correct, BronzeBill. I just tried an experiment using MFC: ChildClass inheriting privately from ParentClass which has a private member - that private member is *not* accessible in a ChildClass method even though ChildClass : private BaseClass.
Above answer was rated as good by the following members: zeal_goswami
I think you are correct, BronzeBill. I just tried an experiment using MFC: ChildClass inheriting privately from ParentClass which has a private member - that private member is *not* accessible in a ChildClass method even though ChildClass : private BaseClass.
You are confusing inheritance with accessability. Private members are indeed inherited. That is, there is a slot for it in the ‘vbtl’ when the class is constructed; however, you don’t have access to it from a derived class, unless the base class has made you a ‘friend’. If ‘private’ members were not inherited, how would ‘friend(ship)’ work? So, inheritance means ‘what do I (physically) get’, not ‘what can I (logically) see’.
gpuchtel's answer makes sense to me. The fact that size of the derived class object is sum of size of all the public and private members of base class and derived class corroborates the argument.
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