cast(public)

[dsimcha]

== Quote from Nick Sabalausky (a at a.a)'s article
> "dsimcha" <dsimcha at yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:h3q5td$2jqa$1 at digitalmars.com...
> >I know I've probably mentioned this one here before, but it was buried in
> >long
> > threads.
> >
> > Could we put a feature in the language that allows private member
> > variables to
> > be cast to public?  The idea is that, if a class/struct designer makes
> > something private, they're saying it's a bad idea to mess with it, and
> > that
> > you do so at your own risk.  However, I think there needs to be a back
> > door to
> > cowboy this one, because otherwise private/protected is just too
> > restrictive
> > for a language like D.  It would work something like this:
> >
> > struct Foo {
> >    private uint bar;
> > }
> >
> > void main() {
> >    Foo foo;
> >    foo.bar++;  // error
> >    (cast(public) foo.bar)++;  // Works.
> > }
> I don't see a real legitimate point to this. If you need something from a
> module not provided by a public interface (or protected sub-classing) than
> that needs to be properly added to the module's interface. Otherwise you're
> just asking for your code to be broken (in a way that may *or* may not be
> fixable) the moment the module you're hacking into is updated. Why hack it,
> when you could just make a proper added feature? Sure, there may be
> source-not-available stuff, but if you need some extra feature from a
> library that doesn't have source available, and the lib's developers aren't
> receptive to your need, then you're just simply using the wrong library
> anyway.

What if you want to make the class/struct do something that is enough of a corner
case that making a formal interface to do what you want would bloat the API for
the other 99.9% of use cases?  IMHO at a more general level sometimes the best
thing to do when trying to solve corner cases is to just hack it, so that you can
simplify the more normal cases.