Cannot access protected member of another instance from derived type's scope

Question

In this answer to the question "Why can't my object access protected members of another object defined in common base class?", one can read:

You can only access protected members from your own base class instance.

Either I don't get it correctly or the following MCVE (live on coliru) proves it wrong:

struct Base           { void f(); protected: int prot; };
struct Derived : Base { void g(); private:   int priv; };

void Base::f()
{
    Base b;
    b.prot = prot;
    (void) b;
}

void Derived::g()
{
    {
        Derived d;
        (void) d.priv;
    }

    {
        Derived& d = *this;
        (void) d.priv;
    }

    {
        Derived d;
        (void) d.prot; // <-- access to other instance's protected member
    }

    {
        Derived& d = *this;
        (void) d.prot;
    }

    // ---

    {
        Base b;
        (void) b.prot; // error: 'int Base::prot' is protected within this context
    }

    {
        Base& b = *this;
        (void) b.prot; // error: 'int Base::prot' is protected within this context
    }
}

In the light of the two errors I get to wonder: why can I access to another Derived instance's protected member from the scope of Derived but cannot access to another Base instance's protected member from the same scope regardless of the fact that Derived devires from Base? Tl; dr: what makes protected more "private" than private in this case?

Notes:

please don't close this question as a duplicate of the linked question;
better title suggestion are welcome.

Access specifiers work the same even if you *see the object* in scope. You use a `Base` reference, and that's all she wrote. — StoryTeller - Unslander Monica, Jul 17 '17 at 13:52

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 17 '17 at 14:17

The rule in [class.access.base] is:

A member m is accessible at the point R when named in class N if [...]

m as a member of N is protected, and R occurs in a member or friend of class N, or in a member of a class P derived from N, where m as a member of P is public, private, or protected

There's a lot of letters in there. But there are basically two conditions:

R is in a member or friend of the class. This handles the d.prot example - we are in a member of Derived while accessing a protected member of Derived.
R is in a member of a derived class and the member being accessed is a member of the derived class instance. This handles the b.prot example - we are in a member of a derived class, but prot is not a member of the derived class.

In other words, Derived can access Base's protected members - but only in the case that it is accessing its own subobject's protected members. It cannot access other Base object's protected members. This makes sense when you consider that this other Base could easily be SomeOtherDerived, in which case that's just another unrelated object to us that we have no special access privileges to.

This answer confirms `protected` access specifier is not as simple as `private` and `public` are! — YSC, Jul 17 '17 at 14:36

Cannot access protected member of another instance from derived type's scope

1 Answers1

Linked