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    CWG Issue 600</TITLE>
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<P><EM>This is an unofficial snapshot of the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG21
  Core Issues List revision 118b.
  See http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/ for the official
  list.</EM></P>
<P>2025-09-28</P>
<HR>
<A NAME="600"></A><H4>600.
  
Does access control apply to members or to names?
</H4>
<B>Section: </B>11.8&#160; [<A href="https://wg21.link/class.access">class.access</A>]
 &#160;&#160;&#160;

 <B>Status: </B>CD6
 &#160;&#160;&#160;

 <B>Submitter: </B>Alisdair Meredith
 &#160;&#160;&#160;

 <B>Date: </B>3 October 2006<BR>


<P>[Accepted at the November, 2020 meeting as part of paper P1787R6 and
moved to DR at the February, 2021 meeting.]</P>

<P>Referring to a private member of a class, 11.8 [<A href="https://wg21.link/class.access#1">class.access</A>] paragraph 1
says,</P>

<BLOCKQUOTE>

its name can be used only by members and friends of the class in which
it is declared.

</BLOCKQUOTE>

<P>That wording does not appear to reflect the intent of access control,
however.  Consider the following:</P>

<PRE>
    struct S {
        void f(int);
    private:
        void f(double);
    };

    void g(S* sp) {
        sp-&gt;f(2);        //<SPAN CLASS="cmnt"> Ill-formed?</SPAN>
    }
</PRE>

<P>The statement from 11.8 [<A href="https://wg21.link/class.access#1">class.access</A>] paragraph 1 says that the
name <TT>f</TT> can be used only by members and friends of <TT>S</TT>.
Function <TT>g</TT> is neither, and it clearly contains a use of the
name <TT>f</TT>.  That appears to make it ill-formed, in spite of the fact
that overload resolution will select the public member.</P>

<P>A related question is whether the use of the term &#8220;name&#8221;
in the description of the effect of access control means that it does
not apply to constructors and destructors, which do not have names.</P>

<P>
<U>Mike Miller</U>: The phrase &#8220;its name can be used&#8221;
should be understood as &#8220;it can be referred to by name.&#8221;
Paragraph 4, among other places, makes it clear that access control is
applied after overload resolution.  The &#8220;name&#8221; phrasing is
there to indicate that access control does not apply where the name is
not used (in a call via a pointer, for example).</P>

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