INST 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Perim
3 Feb 2018
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Document Summary
Classes are a great way of packaging data and functionality in units that can be easily manipulated. If your program does not have classes, you might as well use another language that is not object-oriented! To call a member function, specify the object whose function you want to call, and use the dot operator followed by the function name. Public members of a class are directly accessible from an object by use of the dot operator, whereas private members can only be accessed from within the class itself. Keeping data members private shows good style for encapsulating data by allowing an object to communicate with the rest of the world only through its public member functions. Encapsulating data makes it more difficult for a programmer to make an accidental modification of a value. Friend functions are good for manipulation of objects when it does not make sense to assign the function to a single object.
