"auto" type deduction compiles while explicit type gives error
auto, c++, visual-studio-2012
Solution
I believe it's supposed to work like that. Access applies to names, not the entities they refer to.
Even without `auto` it has always been legal to e.g. pass the result of `getB` to a function expecting a `B`.
Problem
I am using Visual Studio 2012, and I've found something that is kind of weird. I'm not writing something that I necessarily require to be compatible across multiple compilers, but it may become later(when the code is put on web, users don't want to get compiler errors), but I don't want to write something that is wrong, or just not native. So this is test code: ``` class A{ class B{ public: int i; }; B myB; public: B& getB() { return myB; } }; int main() { A a; A::B& b = a.getB(); auto& b2 = a.getB(); } ``` The first line inside main pops `error C2248: 'A::B' : cannot access private class declared in class 'A'` whereas the second line compiles normally. I wonder, is auto supposed to work like this or is this another bug in Visual Studio? I don't have any other compiler I can test it on with You can even write stuff like `std::cout << b2.i << "\n";` and it compiles perfectly fine As per πάντα ῥεῖ's comment, I tried ideone with gcc 4.8.1 and it compiles in the same way, first line is error, second line is perfectly fine.