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Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 22:38:12 -0600
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To: Leon Matthews <nzlug@lost.co.nz>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Support for friend classes
From: cellog@php.net (Greg Beaver)

Leon Matthews wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> I'm responsible for writing unit tests for our PHP projects at work.
> 
> I would find C++ style friend classes really useful for getting at another
> class's private methods.  Since we adopted PHP5 we have been using lots of
> private methods to clean our interfaces up.  Great news for everyone except
> me!
> 
> I'd like to be able to do something like:
> 
> class Coder
> {
>     friend class CoderTest;
> 
>     private static function encode()
>     {
>     ...
>     }
> }
> 
> class CoderTest
> {
>     $expected = ...
>     $actual   = Coder::encode(...);
>     if( $expected != $actual )
>         ...
> }

By definition, if you're accessing it from another class, then perhaps
it isn't "private" at all.  This can be more easily and intuitively
solved by using protected and CoderTest extends Coder, or just making it
public and documenting in the code where it should and should not be used.

This is one reason that "private" should be used sparingly, and perhaps
should be thought of more as "final" than as anything else - once you
declare something private, it is inaccessible.

Greg