Protected and inheritance

[Erdrigard]

So now my derived class isn't accessing protected members of a base class. Or, perhaps more likely, I'm making a mistake. Here's some code. First the base class.

#include "linkednodedef.h"

template <class Type>
class linkedListType {
public:
       //various public members
protected:
          int count;        
          nodeType<Type> *first;
          nodeType<Type> *last;
private:
       //private members
};

And for the derived:

#include "linkedlistthings.h"
#include "linkednodedef.h"

template <class Type>
class unorderedLinkedList : public linkedListType<Type> {
public:
       bool search(const Type& searchItem) const;  //determines if it's in list
       //et al... let's just look at this member for now
};

template <class Type>
bool unorderedLinkedList<Type>::search(const Type& searchItem) const
{ 
     nodeType<Type> *current;    //pointer to traverse the list
     bool found = false;
     current = first;   //set current to point to the first node in the list
     
     while (current != NULL && !found)   //searching the list...
        if (current->info == searchItem)   //searchItem is found
          return true;
        else
            current = current->link;       //make current point to next node if not found
     return found;
}

Problem is found in the boldface line. I get an error that says first is undeclared. Yet, unorderedLinkedList publicly inherits class linkedListType, which first is a protected pointer.

And a couple more details, linkedlistthings.h is now only the header for class linkedListType. I called it linkedlistthings.h because initially it included definitions of nodes and another class, but I moved them to linkednodedef.h.

[cpluplusrat]

replace first by this-> first.

http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/templates.html#faq-35.19

[Erdrigard]

Thanks alot.