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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Posts
    1

    Struggling with Friend classes in seperate header files

    I am struggling to enable friendship between two classes in separate header files for a banking program.
    I am attempting to get the Person class to use variables from the Account class. Heres what I have so far.

    ACCOUNT.h:
    Code:
    #include<iostream>
    #include<fstream>
    #include<cctype>
    #include<iomanip>
    #include <string>
    #include <math.h>
    #include <windows.h>
    #include <vector>
    #include "Person.h"
    
    using namespace std;
    
    class person;
    
    class account
    
    {
    int deposit;
    friend class person;
    
    public:
    void dep(int);	//function to accept amount and add to balance amount
    void draw(int);	//function to accept amount and subtract from balance amount
    int retdeposit() const;	//function to return balance amount
    friend class person;
    
    
    };
    PERSON.h:
    Code:
    #ifndef PERSON_H
    #define PERSON_H
    
    
    #include<iostream>
    #include<fstream>
    #include<cctype>
    #include<iomanip>
    #include <string>
    #include <math.h>
    #include <windows.h>
    
    
    
    
    
    using namespace std;
    
    
    
    class person 
    {
    	int acno;
    	char name[50];
    	char add[50];
    	char dob[10];
    	char type[30];
    	char tele[12];
    	char mort;
    	char mortgage;
    	double Principle;
    	double initialPrinciple;
    	double yearlyInterest;
    	double initialYearlyInterest;
    	double monthlyInterest;
    	double initialMonthlyInterest;
    	double monthlyPayment;
    	double initialMonthlyPayment;
    	int lengthInYears;
    	float lengthInYears2;
    	double initialLengthinYears;
    	int lengthInMonths;
    	int initialLengthInMonths;
    	
    	
    
    	
    	
    public:
    void create_account();	//function to get data from user
    void show_account() const;	//function to show data on screen
    modify();	//function to add new data
    void report() const;	//function to show data in tabular format
    int retacno() const;	//function to return account number
    char rettype() const;	//function to return type of account
    	
    	
    	#endif	// PERSON_H
    	
    };      //class ends here

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    Timisoara, Romania
    Posts
    14,360

    Re: Struggling with Friend classes in seperate header files

    Yes, and?

    Now, I see no reason whatsoever, the Person should access privates of the account. Can you explain why you want that?
    Marius Bancila
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  3. #3
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    Holland (land of the dope)
    Posts
    4,123

    Re: Struggling with Friend classes in seperate header files

    Avoid 'friend' at all costs (a.k.a. never use it). Usually the 'friend'-option means your design is bad.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Apr 2000
    Location
    Belgium (Europe)
    Posts
    4,626

    Re: Struggling with Friend classes in seperate header files

    Quote Originally Posted by Skizmo View Post
    Avoid 'friend' at all costs (a.k.a. never use it). Usually the 'friend'-option means your design is bad.
    That's a pretty bad blanket statement there.
    friend classes exist for a reason, and sometimes, the clean and good design does use friends where a forced approach avoiding friends at all costs will be awkward or make documentation awkward.

    One of the good reasons to use friend is if you are making a library of classes to be used by others.
    And some of the classes need to "talk to eachother", but this "talk" isn't actually part of the public interface for the classes.

    friends solve this. the classes can access private data/members of eachother.
    The alternative without friends is that you make all those special purpose members and data public. Which means you need documentation saying "don't ever use this function" or you don't document at all which will cause other issues. And it causes problems because sooner or later one of the consumers of your classes will have found "this neat trick" with calling/using one of those functions and now you're sort of forced into continuously supporting it.

    friend classes mean stuff that's supposed to be private stays private for everyone but the friends. that's a good thing. But yes, as with many things, you can abuse it in wrong ways.

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