Protected Members and Operator overloading

[n00bStudent]

Hello. I have the following problem.

Simple example

Inside the A.h

class A {

public:
	friend ostream& operator<<(ostream &out, A const c);

protected:
	int i;

};



And in the .cpp file A.cpp


ostream& operator<< (ostream &output, const A &dataToPrint)
{
	cout << dataToPrint.i << endl;
	return output;
}

The error I am getting is

error C2248: 'A::i' : cannot access protected member declared in class 'A'


I know is because the i is protected and if I convert it to private it works. But how can I make it work without changing the protected?


Thanks in advance.

[Cubbi]

replace A const c with A const & c (or const A& c)

demo: http://ideone.com/TTDhz

[n00bStudent]

Thanks a lot! And thanks for the quick reply.