Access to method pointer to protected method?

Question

This code:

class B {
 protected:
  void Foo(){}
}

class D : public B {
 public:
  void Baz() {
    Foo();
  }
  void Bar() {
    printf(\"%x\\n\", &B::F         


        

Answer 1

I believe protected doesn't work the way you think it does in C++. In C++ protected only allows access to parent members of its own instance NOT arbitrary instances of the parent class. As noted in other answers, taking the address of a parent function would violate this.

If you want access to arbitrary instances of a parent, you could have the parent class friend the child, or make the parent method public. There's no way to change the meaning of protected to do what you want it to do within a C++ program.

But what are you really trying to do here? Maybe we can solve that problem for you.