This is an unofficial snapshot of the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG21 Core Issues List revision 114a. See http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/ for the official list.

2024-04-18

500. Access in base-specifiers of friend and nested classes

[Voted into WP at the October, 2006 meeting.]

I don't know the reason for this distinction, but it seems to be surprising that Base::A is legal and D is illegal in this example:

    class D;
    class Base
    {
        class A;
        class B;
        friend class D;
    };
    class Base::B
    {
    };
    class Base::A : public Base::B  // OK because of issue 45
    {
    };
    class D : public Base::B        // illegal because of 11.4p4
    {
    };

Shouldn't this be consistent (either way)?

Notes from the April, 2005 meeting:

In discussing issue 372, the CWG decided that access in the base-specifiers of a class should be the same as for its members, and that resolution will apply to friend declarations, as well.

Proposed resolution (October, 2005):

This issue is resolved by the resolution of issue 372.