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Access modifiers (or access specifiers) are keywords in object-oriented languages that set the accessibility of classes, methods, and other members. Access modifiers are a specific part of programming language syntax used to facilitate the encapsulation of components.
The following is a common set of access specifiers: [10] Private (or class-private) restricts access to the class itself. Only methods that are part of the same class can access private members. Protected (or class-protected) allows the class itself and all its subclasses to access the member. Public means that any code can access the member by ...
A class in C++ is a user-defined type or data structure declared with any of the keywords class, struct or union (the first two are collectively referred to as non-union classes) that has data and functions (also called member variables and member functions) as its members whose access is governed by the three access specifiers private, protected or public.
It may also refer to the limiting of direct access to some of that data, such as an object's components. [1] Essentially, encapsulation prevents external code from being concerned with the internal workings of an object. Encapsulation allows developers to present a consistent interface that is independent of its internal implementation.
Class methods – belong to the class as a whole and have access to only class variables and inputs from the procedure call; Instance methods – belong to individual objects, and have access to instance variables for the specific object they are called on, inputs, and class variables
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If the access specifier is omitted, a "class" inherits privately, while a "struct" inherits publicly. Base classes may be declared as virtual; this is called virtual inheritance . Virtual inheritance ensures that only one instance of a base class exists in the inheritance graph, avoiding some of the ambiguity problems of multiple inheritance.
Much finer control of access rights can be defined using mutators and accessors. For example, a parameter may be made read-only simply by defining an accessor but not a mutator. The visibility of the two methods may be different; it is often useful for the accessor to be public while the mutator remains protected, package-private or internal.