couple of questions about encapsulation

[mostuniquename]

i'm new to c++, i was wondering if somebody could clarify something for me about encapsulation, for example if you have 2 classes

class Music {

private:
int a;

public:
int b();
int C();

};

class Record: public Music {

private:
char c;
int a;
float b();

protected:
int d();
void e();

public:
char f();
int g();
};

what are the member functions here of class Record that can access private data of class Record, and which member functions of class Record can access private data of class Music. and if there is a external routine that has an object instance of class Record, what member functions of class Record can it access. also if a new class newRecord is derived from class Record, what member functions in Record can newRecord access?

also does anybody know why compiler says it is dangerous to convert base class pointer into a derived class pointer, whats dangerous about it.

[prog-bman]

Code tags please.

>what are the member functions here of class Record that can access private data of class Record.

Any member function of it own class can access the private data of its class.

>and which member functions of class Record can access private data of class Music.

None of record's member functions can access music's private data.

>and if there is a external routine that has an object instance of class Record, what member functions of class Record can it access.

Any functions that are public in Record.

>also if a new class newRecord is derived from class Record, what member functions in Record can newRecord access

Ussually the public ones.

>also does anybody know why compiler says it is dangerous to convert base class pointer into a derived class pointer, whats dangerous about it.

I am not sure.

[Daishi]

also does anybody know why compiler says it is dangerous to convert base class pointer into a derived class pointer, whats dangerous about it.

It sounds like you are trying to do something like the following...

Music *music = new Music;

Record *record = (Record *)music;

This is fine and it will compile, but you *never* want to do that. Remember that Record, though it contains very similar data to Music, is actually a different class. The original music object that you created in memory only contains data from the Music class, and nothing from the Record class. If you try to access data from any class with a pointer to an object that isn't a member of that class, then the program will crash or worse - something very unexpected will happen.

On the other hand, you can do the reverse just fine. This is one of the more awesome things in object oriented programming. :)

Record *record = new Record;

Music *music = (Music *)record;

//  Call Music methods, access Music's member variables, whatever..

This is extremely powerful because you can create new derived objects, and store them in memory within a single list as pointers of a base class. Combining this with overloaded operators/functions can make for a very elegantly designed program that is easy to add onto...

Hope that was at least a little bit helpful. :)

-Fredric