Question

Given that we have overloaded methods in base class, and a derived class that was inherited as private/protected.

1. Can we restore only one/several of the original access level of the overloaded methods?
2. On GCC 4.4.0 i try to put the base methods under protected access, then inherited it using private access. When i try to restore the access level to public, it works! Is this how its suppose to work? or is it a bug on the compiler? To my understanding, restoring access level shouldn’t be able to be used to promote or demote a member’s access level.

Code snippet :

class base {
  public:
    void method() {}
    void method(int x) {}
  protected:
    void method2() {}
};

class derived : private base {
  public:
    base::method; // Here, i want to restore only the none parameterized method
    base::method2; // method2 is now public??
};

Answer 1

Changing accessibility of inherited functions through a using declaration cannot be done selectively on given overload for the simple reason that a using declaration only introduces a name into the declarative region and that by definition, functions overloads share the same name.

The only alternative I see here is to use trivial forwarding functions :

class derived : private base
{
public:
    void method() { base::method(); }

    using base::method2; // method2 is now public
    // method(int) stays inaccessible
};

I’m not quite sure I understand your second question, but yes : you can change base members accessibility in a derived class through using declarations.