C++ private pointer "leaking"?
- by jbu
I'm going to create a class to hold a long list of parameters that will be passed to a function. Let's use this shorter example:
class ParamList{
public:
ParamList(string& a_string);
string& getString(); //returns my_string
private:
string& my_string;
}
My question is this: my_string is private, yet I'm returning the reference to it. Isn't that called something like private pointer leaking in C++? Is this not good programming practice? I want callers of getString to be able to get the reference and also modify it.
Please let me know.
Thanks,
jbu
edit1: callers will use getString() and modify the string that was returned.
