Question

I have a class that only really ever needed by classes in a certain class hierarchy. I wanted to know if it is possible to nest the class in the highest class’s protected section and have all the other classes automatically inherit it?

Answer 1

‘Inherit’ is the wrong word to use since it has a very specific definition in C++ which you don’t mean, but yes you can do that. This is legal:

 class A {    protected:    class Nested { };  };   class B : public A {    private:    Nested n;  }; 

And code that is not in A or something that derives from A cannot access or instantiate A::Nested.