Reply to torhu,

> BCS wrote:
> 
>> If I understand correctly, the idea is to get rid of friend but still
>> let some things look inside of others. This solution lets closed set
>> of code interact at a low level while doing encapsulation at wider
>> scopes. The reason friend is discarded is that it has the power to do
>> arbitrary snooping which causes the same kind of problems as goto's
>> arbitrary redirection causes.
>> 
> 'friend' doesn't work they way you're implying here.
> 
> 

Yes, friend acts as an invitation, however there are no limitations on who a class can invite. This is "arbitrary snooping" I was talking about. With D's private semantics, that same "you can look at my private stuff" ability is limited to a finite set of code. It is somewhat like how goto can go to most anywhere in a function but labeled break and continues can only go to the start or end of a loop.

arun s wrote:
> class A {      private int c=0;  }
> 
> 
> void main() {
>       A a = new A();
>       printf("%d",a.c);
> }
> 
> consider the above code snippet..... y there is no error in printf statement a.c , since attribute "c" is private ???? 

In D, 'private' really means 'package private', like Java's 'package' visibility (or 'default' visibility), not like C++'s 'private'.  While I prefer tight visibility semantics, I think this is a reasonable compromise.

Dave

David B. Held wrote:
> arun s wrote:
>> class A {      private int c=0;  }
>>
>>
>> void main() {
>>       A a = new A();
>>       printf("%d",a.c);
>> }
>>
>> consider the above code snippet..... y there is no error in printf statement a.c , since attribute "c" is private ???? 
> 
> In D, 'private' really means 'package private', like Java's 'package' visibility (or 'default' visibility), not like C++'s 'private'.  While I prefer tight visibility semantics, I think this is a reasonable compromise.
> 
> Dave

Actually its module-private, with the seperate 'package' attribute providing package-level visibility.  Unfortunately 'package' currently suffers in that such declerations are hidden from sub-packages.

-- Chris Nicholson-Sauls