I have a simple class X, and set of templatized classes Y<T,U>. I'd like all classes Y where the first templatization parameter happens to be X to be a friend of X itself. The following hopefully conveys what I want, but the friend statement gives a compile error.
template<typename T, typename U>
class Y {
};
class X {
public:
X(int value) : i(value) {}
const int& getI() const { return i; }
private:
int i;
template<class U> friend class Y<X,U>;
};
I'm not sure templatization of friend statements is allowed at all (let alone partial templatization of friend statements). Is there a way to do this? Or am I stuck listing out all the friends one-by-one?
Thanks,
Matt
For the non-partial part of your question, the syntax is:
class X {
template<class T, class U> friend class Y;
};
I guess, in most cases that should be sufficient.
With C++11 you can actually friend a templated alias:
template<typename T, typename U>
class Y { };
class X {
public:
X(int value) : i(value) {}
const int& getI() const { return i; }
private:
int i;
template<class U> using YX = Y<X,U>;
template<class U> friend class YX;
};
However, that does not seem to work (I'm not sure if the friend declaration above has any effect at all).
The friend declaration page on cppreference.com specifies:
Friend declarations cannot refer to partial specializations, but can refer to full specializations
So as chtz said you can have a non-partial specialization friend.
Edit:
See also another answer on stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11046918/5776353