Re: [Dev-C++] operator+ and inheritance

[Stanley <sms...@iw...>]

 --- On Sun 05/09, =?ISO-8859-2?Q?OROSZI_Bal=E1zs?= < or...@vp... > wrote:

From: =?ISO-8859-2?Q?OROSZI_Bal=E1zs?= [mailto: or...@vp...]

To: dev...@li...

Date: Sun, 09 May 2004 13:07:44 +0200

Subject: Re: [Dev-C++] operator+ and inheritance



A lot depends on how you want to handle it.  If you declare

your base data as private, then you'll have to call your

base class operator+ in order to access the sum of the

data in the base class.



However; you can also declare your data in the base class

to be protected, in which case you can access and modify

your base class data directly.



Which method you use is a desing decision.  Do you want to hide

your data as much as possible?  Or is convienent access to your 

data from the derived class more important?  If your operator+

is the only method that need direct access to your base data,

then using the base class operator+ is probably a good way

to implement the class.  If your derived class needs access to

the base class in a lot of methods, the going with protected

data is probably better.



And, of course, a third solution is to provide a set of protected

inlined mutator/accessors so that your derived class(es) have full

access to your base class data, but other classes do not.  This

is a lot more work, but a purist would probably take that as the

best solution.

TTFN

Stanley



_______________________________________________