When should you use 'friend' in C++?

Question

I have been reading through the C++ FAQ and was curious about the friend declaration. I personally have never used it, however I am interested in exploring the language.

Answer 1

You control the access rights for members and functions using Private/Protected/Public right? so assuming the idea of each and every one of those 3 levels is clear, then it should be clear that we are missing something...

The declaration of a member/function as protected for example is pretty generic. You are saying that this function is out of reach for everyone (except for an inherited child of course). But what about exceptions? every security system lets you have some type of 'white list" right?

So friend lets you have the flexibility of having rock solid object isolation, but allows for a "loophole" to be created for things that you feel are justified.

I guess people say it is not needed because there is always a design that will do without it. I think it is similar to the discussion of global variables: You should never use them, There is always a way to do without them... but in reality, you see cases where that ends up being the (almost) most elegant way... I think this is the same case with friends.

It doesn't really do any good, other than let you access a member variable without using a setting function

well that is not exactly the way to look at it. The idea is to control WHO can access what, having or not a setting function has little to do with it.