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Private
Functions and variables to which only the class member functions (and friends) have access.
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Public
Functions, and rarely non-constant variables, that are directly accessible through an object.
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Protected
The protected keyword behaves the same as the private keyword, with the exception that protected variables are directly accessible from within subclasses.
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Object
An object is an instance of a class; it is a variable with all the functionality specified in the class's definition.
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Data Member
A data member is a variable declared in a class definition.
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Member Function
Functions that belong to a class and operate on a its data members.
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Constructor
The constructor of a class is the function that is called automatically when a new object is created. It should initialize the class's data members and allocate any necessary memory.
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Destructor
A destructor is the function called when an object goes out of scope. It should free memory dynamically allocated for the object's data members.
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Friend
A friend function is a function that has access to all the class's data members and member functions, including those under the private and protected headings.
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Inheritance
Inheritance is the property exhibited when a subclass is derived from a superclass. In particular it refers to the fact that an instance of the subclass has all of the data members and member functions of the superclass (and possibly more).
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Base Class
A base class is a class from which another class, called a derived class, inherits components.
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Derived Class
A derived class is a class which has inherited the components of another class, called the base class.
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Class Template
A class which has one or more data members (and functions) of some unspecified data type. By defining a template, the programmer can create an object using any data type or types.
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Composition
Composition is the use of an object as a member variable of another class as an alternative to creating a subclass.
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Virtual
A C++ key word used to qualify functions and inheritance.