Accessing private members of surrounding class-CodePudding

I have two classes like this:

#include <iostream>

class A {
    public:
        class B {
            public:
                void    printX(void) const { std::cout << A::x << std::endl; }
        };
    private:
        int x;
};

Obviously this piece of code doesn't work because B can't access x, but is there a way to make it work?

I've tried using friend class keyword in both classes like this:

class A {
    public:
        class B {
            public:
            friend class A;
                void    printX(void) const { std::cout << A::x << std::endl; }
        };
        friend class B;
    private:
        int x;
};

But it didn't work either, and I can't figure out if it's even possible.

CodePudding user response：

As the error message should tell you, A::x isn’t a static member so you need an object instance to access it. If you add a reference to instance of A to B::A, you can use that to access A::x.

For example, the following works:

class A {
    public:
        class B {
            public:
                B(A const& a) : a(a) {}
                void printX(void) const { std::cout << a.x << std::endl; }

            private:
                A const& a;
        };
    private:
        int x;
};

Note that using a reference member has several implications. Notably, you can now no longer reassign instances of type A::B, nor are its instances movable. As a consequence, it’s often convenient to hold a pointer rather than a reference to A inside A::B. Either way, you’ll need to ensure that instances of A::B do not outlive the A instance they refer to, otherwise you end up with a dangling reference.

CodePudding user response：

According to the C 17 Standard (14.7 Nested classes)

1 A nested class is a member and as such has the same access rights as any other member. The members of an enclosing class have no special access to members of a nested class; the usual access rules (Clause 14) shall be obeyed.

The problem with the provided code is that x is not a static data member of the class A. You need to provide an object of the class A the data member x of which will be accessed within an object of the nested class.

For example

    class A {
    public:
        class B {
        public:
            void    printX( const A &a ) const { std::cout << a.x << std::endl; }
        };
    private:
        int x;
    };

    A::B().printX( A() );