C++ Primer Plus, Fourth Edition

Summary

This chapter covers many important aspects of defining and using classes. Some of the material in this chapter may seem vague to you until your own experiences enrich your understanding. Meanwhile, let's summarize the chapter.

Normally, the only way you can access private class members is by using a class method. C++ alleviates that restriction with friend functions. To make a function a friend function, declare the function in the class declaration and preface the declaration with the keyword friend.

C++ extends overloading to operators by letting you define special operator functions that describe how particular operators relate to a particular class. An operator function can be a class member function or a friend function. (A few operators ...