Question

should you keep all the data except functions in your class in private section? for example: I have a std::list of integers which i need to access in other class. how would you iterate it and would you really want to keep it private?

Edit:

I’m looking for an individual access to each element in other class.

Answer 1

The real question is why you need to iterate over the list in the ‘other class’. If you need to perform a specific operation in the client class you could have other choices:

1. If you need to perform a well-defined operation (say, computing an average of the values in the list) then you can implement this functionality as a member function of the class that keeps the list.

2. If you need to perform all kinds of operations on the list then you can build a generic iterator interface, which accepts functions or functors that implement the various operations and return whatever results you need.

Neither of these options require you to expose the list itself.