@inproceedings{ac909fb3a8b842e7861265a6d78be985,
title = "An empirical study of the use of friends in C++ software",
abstract = "A commonly held belief is that the friend construct in C++ is a violation of encapsulation. However, little empirical analysis of its use has taken place to provide evidence to support this claim. This paper presents a study which assesses the design implications of including friendship in a system. A number of hypotheses are investigated based on previous work in this area by Counsell and Newson, [4]. Our initial findings suggest that classes declared as friends are coupling hotspots, that the more friends a class has the more protected and private members it will contain and that friendship is not used to access inherited protected members.",
author = "Michael English and Jim Buckley and Tony Cahill and Kristian Lynch",
year = "2005",
doi = "10.1109/WPC.2005.7",
language = "English",
isbn = "0769522548",
series = "Proceedings - IEEE Workshop on Program Comprehension",
pages = "329--332",
editor = "J.R. Cordy and H. Gall and J.I. Maletic",
booktitle = "Proceedings - 13th International Workshop on Program Comprehension, IWPC 2005",
note = "13th International Workshop on Program Comprehension, IWPC 2005 ; Conference date: 15-05-2005 Through 16-05-2005",
}