Access Control in Classes
Now before studying how to define class and its objects, lets first quickly learn what are access specifiers.
Access specifiers in C++ class defines the access control rules. C++ has 3 new keywords introduced, namely,
- public
- private
- protected
These access specifiers are used to set boundaries for availability of members of class be it data members or member functions
Access specifiers in the program, are followed by a colon. You can use either one, two or all 3 specifiers in the same class to set different boundaries for different class members. They change the boundary for all the declarations that follow them.
Public
Public, means all the class members declared under public will be available to everyone. The data members and member functions declared public can be accessed by other classes too. Hence there are chances that they might change them. So the key members must not be declared public.
class PublicAccess
{
public: // public access specifier
int x; // Data Member Declaration
void display(); // Member Function decaration
}
Private
Private keyword, means that no one can access the class members declared private outside that class. If someone tries to access the private member, they will get a compile time error. By default class variables and member functions are private.
class PrivateAccess
{
private: // private access specifier
int x; // Data Member Declaration
void display(); // Member Function decaration
}
Protected
Protected, is the last access specifier, and it is similar to private, it makes class member inaccessible outside the class. But they can be accessed by any subclass of that class. (If class A is inherited by class B, then class B is subclass of class A. We will learn this later.)
class ProtectedAccess
{
protected: // protected access specifier
int x; // Data Member Declaration
void display(); // Member Function decaration
}