Difference between private, public, and protected inheritance

Difference between private, public, and protected inheritance

First, let’s talk about the tree accessors we know: public, protected, and private

class Base {
    public:
        int publicMember;
    protected:
        int protectedMember;
    private:
        int privateMember;
};

• Everything that is aware of Base is also aware that Base contains publicMember.
• Only the children (and their children) are aware that Base contains protectedMember.
• No one but Base is aware of privateMember.

By “is aware of”, I mean “acknowledge the existence of, and thus be able to access”.

The same happens with public, private and protected inheritance. Let’s consider a class Base and a class Child that inherits from Base.

• If the inheritance is public, everything that is aware of Base and Child is also aware that Child inherits from Base.
• If the inheritance is protected, only Child, and its children, are aware that they inherit from Base.
• If the inheritance is private, no one other than Child is aware of the inheritance.

More elaborate explaination

class A 
{
public:
    int x;
protected:
    int y;
private:
    int z;
};

class B : public A
{
    // x is public
    // y is protected
    // z is not accessible from B
};

class C : protected A
{
    // x is protected
    // y is protected
    // z is not accessible from C
};

class D : private A    // 'private' is default for classes
{
    // x is private
    // y is private
    // z is not accessible from D
};

Classes B, C and D all contain the variables x, y and z. It is just question of access.

Intresting points

• visibility in C++ is based on class instead of on object, which means that objects of the same class can access each other’s private fields without restriction