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Showing content from http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/inheritance/ below:

Friends are functions or classes declared with the friend keyword.

A non-member function can access the private and protected members of a class if it is declared a friend of that class. That is done by including a declaration of this external function within the class, and preceding it with the keyword friend:

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// friend functions
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

class Rectangle {
    int width, height;
  public:
    Rectangle() {}
    Rectangle (int x, int y) : width(x), height(y) {}
    int area() {return width * height;}
    friend Rectangle duplicate (const Rectangle&);
};

Rectangle duplicate (const Rectangle& param)
{
  Rectangle res;
  res.width = param.width*2;
  res.height = param.height*2;
  return res;
}

int main () {
  Rectangle foo;
  Rectangle bar (2,3);
  foo = duplicate (bar);
  cout << foo.area() << '\n';
  return 0;
}

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Typical use cases of friend functions are operations that are conducted between two different classes accessing private or protected members of both.

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// friend class
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

class Square;

class Rectangle {
    int width, height;
  public:
    int area ()
      {return (width * height);}
    void convert (Square a);
};

class Square {
  friend class Rectangle;
  private:
    int side;
  public:
    Square (int a) : side(a) {}
};

void Rectangle::convert (Square a) {
  width = a.side;
  height = a.side;
}
  
int main () {
  Rectangle rect;
  Square sqr (4);
  rect.convert(sqr);
  cout << rect.area();
  return 0;
}

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There is something else new in this example: at the beginning of the program, there is an empty declaration of class Square. This is necessary because class Rectangle uses Square (as a parameter in member convert), and Square uses Rectangle (declaring it a friend).

Friendships are never corresponded unless specified: In our example, Rectangle is considered a friend class by Square, but Square is not considered a friend by Rectangle. Therefore, the member functions of Rectangle can access the protected and private members of Square but not the other way around. Of course, Square could also be declared friend of Rectangle, if needed, granting such an access.

Another property of friendships is that they are not transitive: The friend of a friend is not considered a friend unless explicitly specified.

For example, let's imagine a series of classes to describe two kinds of polygons: rectangles and triangles. These two polygons have certain common properties, such as the values needed to calculate their areas: they both can be described simply with a height and a width (or base).

This could be represented in the world of classes with a class Polygon from which we would derive the two other ones: Rectangle and Triangle:

Classes that are derived from others inherit all the accessible members of the base class. That means that if a base class includes a member A and we derive a class from it with another member called B, the derived class will contain both member A and member B.

The inheritance relationship of two classes is declared in the derived class. Derived classes definitions use the following syntax:

class derived_class_name: public base_class_name
{ /*...*/ };


// derived classes
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

class Polygon {
  protected:
    int width, height;
  public:
    void set_values (int a, int b)
      { width=a; height=b;}
 };

class Rectangle: public Polygon {
  public:
    int area ()
      { return width * height; }
 };

class Triangle: public Polygon {
  public:
    int area ()
      { return width * height / 2; }
  };
  
int main () {
  Rectangle rect;
  Triangle trgl;
  rect.set_values (4,5);
  trgl.set_values (4,5);
  cout << rect.area() << '\n';
  cout << trgl.area() << '\n';
  return 0;
}

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The protected access specifier used in class Polygon is similar to private. Its only difference occurs in fact with inheritance: When a class inherits another one, the members of the derived class can access the protected members inherited from the base class, but not its private members.

By declaring width and height as protected instead of private, these members are also accessible from the derived classes Rectangle and Triangle, instead of just from members of Polygon. If they were public, they could be accessed just from anywhere.

We can summarize the different access types according to which functions can access them in the following way:

In the example above, the members inherited by Rectangle and Triangle have the same access permissions as they had in their base class Polygon:

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Polygon::width           // protected access
Rectangle::width         // protected access

Polygon::set_values()    // public access
Rectangle::set_values()  // public access  

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class Rectangle: public Polygon { /* ... */ }

With protected, all public members of the base class are inherited as protected in the derived class. Conversely, if the most restricting access level is specified (private), all the base class members are inherited as private.

For example, if daughter were a class derived from mother that we defined as:

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class Daughter: protected Mother;

If no access level is specified for the inheritance, the compiler assumes private for classes declared with keyword class and public for those declared with struct.

Actually, most use cases of inheritance in C++ should use public inheritance. When other access levels are needed for base classes, they can usually be better represented as member variables instead.

• its constructors and its destructor
• its assignment operator members (operator=)
• its friends
• its private members

Unless otherwise specified, the constructors of a derived class calls the default constructor of its base classes (i.e., the constructor taking no arguments). Calling a different constructor of a base class is possible, using the same syntax used to initialize member variables in the initialization list:

derived_constructor_name (parameters) : base_constructor_name (parameters) {...}


// constructors and derived classes
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

class Mother {
  public:
    Mother ()
      { cout << "Mother: no parameters\n"; }
    Mother (int a)
      { cout << "Mother: int parameter\n"; }
};

class Daughter : public Mother {
  public:
    Daughter (int a)
      { cout << "Daughter: int parameter\n\n"; }
};

class Son : public Mother {
  public:
    Son (int a) : Mother (a)
      { cout << "Son: int parameter\n\n"; }
};

int main () {
  Daughter kelly(0);
  Son bud(0);
  
  return 0;
}

Mother: no parameters
Daughter: int parameter

Mother: int parameter
Son: int parameter

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Daughter (int a)          // nothing specified: call default constructor
Son (int a) : Mother (a)  // constructor specified: call this specific constructor 

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class Rectangle: public Polygon, public Output;
class Triangle: public Polygon, public Output;

// multiple inheritance
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

class Polygon {
  protected:
    int width, height;
  public:
    Polygon (int a, int b) : width(a), height(b) {}
};

class Output {
  public:
    static void print (int i);
};

void Output::print (int i) {
  cout << i << '\n';
}

class Rectangle: public Polygon, public Output {
  public:
    Rectangle (int a, int b) : Polygon(a,b) {}
    int area ()
      { return width*height; }
};

class Triangle: public Polygon, public Output {
  public:
    Triangle (int a, int b) : Polygon(a,b) {}
    int area ()
      { return width*height/2; }
};
  
int main () {
  Rectangle rect (4,5);
  Triangle trgl (4,5);
  rect.print (rect.area());
  Triangle::print (trgl.area());
  return 0;
}

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