Question

Spoiler alert: Maybe a stupid question. 🙂

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

class Base
{
    public:
        virtual void YourMethod(int) const = 0;
};

class Intermediate : private Base
{
    public:
        virtual void YourMethod(int i) const
        {
            cout << "Calling from Intermediate" << i << "\n";
        }
};

class Derived : private Intermediate, public Base
{
    public:
        void YourMethod(int i) const
        {
            cout << "Calling from Derived : " << i << "\n";
        }
};

int main()
{
}

Can someone Explain to me why this throws the compiler warning:

main.cpp:21: warning: direct base ‘Base’ inaccessible in ‘Derived’ due to ambiguity

Now, I understand that there is no way this code will work. I want to know why. Base is private to Intermediate so it should not be visible to Derived through Intermediate. So where does the ambiguity come from? In constructor?

Answer 1

This has nothing to do with overriding functions. It has to do with conversions. It really doesn’t have to do with accessibility (i.e “private” or such) directly either. Here is a simpler example

struct A { int a; };
struct B : A { };
struct C : B, A { }; // direct A can't be referred to!

You can refer to the indirect A object by first converting to B and then to A:

B *b = &somec;
A *a = b;

You cannot do such with the direct A object. If you try to directly convert to A, it will have two possibilities. It follows that it is impossible to refer to the non-static data members of the direct A object given a Derived object.

Notice that accessibility is orthogonal to visibility. Something can be accessible even tho it’s not visible (for example by refering to it by a qualified name), and something can be visible even though it’s not accessible. Even if all the above derivations would be declared private, the problem would still show up: Access is checked last – it won’t influence name lookup or conversion rules.

Also, anyone can cast to an unambiguous private base class with defined behavior (the C++ Standard makes an exception for this) using a C-style cast, even if normally access wouldn’t be granted to do so. And then there are still friends and the class itself that could freely convert.