Question

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

I see a lot of people recommending a function/class to be made a friend of another class here in SO though there are other alternatives. Shouldn’t friend be sparingly used in C++? I feel other options must be considered before deciding on using the friend feature. Opinions/suggestions are welcome.

Answer 1

Without specific examples this is hard to decide. While friend isn’t strictly necessary it does have its uses. If, as you claim, there are better alternatives then obviously use them, by simple definition of the word “better”. Or maybe the decision which solution is better isn’t that clean-cut after all.

Personally, I prefer to avoid it when possible but I prefer to use it over method duplication: for example, I do not like to write a print method just to avoid making operator << a friend because I don’t see the benefit of the duplicate method.