Calling private method in C++

Question

This is purely a theoretical question, I know that if someone declares a method private, you probably shouldn\'t call it. I managed to call private virtual methods and chang

Answer 1

Followup on T.E.D.'s answer: Don't edit the header. Instead create your own private copy of the header and insert some friend declarations in that bogus copy of the header. In your source, #include this bogus header rather than the real one. Voila!

Changing private to public might change the weak symbols that result from inlined methods, which in turn might cause the linker to complain. The weak symbols that result from inline methods will have the same signatures with the phony and real headers if all that is done is to add some friend declarations. With those friend declarations you can now do all kinds of evil things with the class such as accessing private data and calling private members.

Addendum
This approach won't work if the header in question uses #pragma once instead of a #include guard to ensure the header is idempotent.