Friend classes in Objective-C

Question

Is there any way to create something like friend classes in Objective-C?

Answer 1

There is no such thing as a friend class in ObjC.

And to access a private variable of another class you don't even need to be declared as a friend. For example, you can use the runtime functions

id the_private_ivar;
object_getInstanceVariable(the_object, "_ivar_name", &the_private_ivar);

to get the_object->_ivar_name, bypassing compiler checks.