How to change the Private access specifier to Public in Derived Class

Hi,
Suppose I have a base class with an Integer Variable as defined below.
Class Base{
public:
int a;
};

Now I derive privately a derived Class as
Class Derived : private Base{
};

Now int a will become Private in base class.

My question is how can I again change the access specifier of int a to Public in the derived class?

Thanks,
Sanjay

 

Hi,
I guess I was not clear what I want to achieve in my question earlier.

See using Private Inheritance I inherited integer a in to derived class.
Now the access specifier of int a in derived is Private.I again want to change the access specifier of int a in to say either public or protected in the derived class.
So the crux is How can I change the access specifier in a class from one type to another?

~Sanj

 

Right now I don't have a scenario for why I will need it.

Just wanted to know whether conceptually is it possible or not?

~sanj

 

Ok..Actually this was asked recently to me in an interview and I believe there is some trick to achieve this behaviour. I searched a lot for this but coudn't get anything.

Anyways.....

 

You should not do it, because if the program design requires that Derived is derived from a private Base then the intent of the design is that Base's members should be private within Derived, so if you need to circumvent that, then your design is broken. If you need Derived::a to be public then (a) derive it as public not private, or (b) add a public accessor function.

Code:

class Derived : private Base
{
public:
  int *get_a() { return &a; }
}

 

Code:

class Derived : private Base {
  public:
    Base::a;
};

should do the trick.