What about nested classes in C++?

Lecture overview -- Keyboard shortcut: 'u'

Previous page: What about interfaces in C++? -- Keyboard shortcut: 'p'

Next page: What about prevention of derivation in C++ -- Keyboard shortcut: 'n'

Lecture notes - all slides and notes together

slide -- Keyboard shortcut: 't'

Help page about these notes

Alphabetic index

Lecture 4 - Page 10 : 24

Notes about C++
Abstraction Mechanisms, Part 2

What about nested classes in C++?

Classes can be nested in C++

Similar to inner static classes in Java

No consequences for the nesting of instances of the involved classes

The C++ Programming Language: Page 851-852

"The members of a member class have no special access to members of an enclosing class"
- According to Stroustrup page 851
- In g++ instances of an inner class can access private members of instances of an outer class
  - This seems to be reasonable because class Inner is nested in class Outer

If an instance i of Inner needs access to the instance o of Outer, o must passed as a parameter to the constructor of Inner, or to an Innner method

Class Outer that contains class Inner - does not compile.

Class Outer that contains class Inner - friends of each other.

Related examples below ...
A variant where class Inner is private in Outer - does not compile.

Inner attempts to access to non-static variable in Outer - does not compile.

Problems solved - This program compiles.