Bulls and Cows - Why did we declare the IsIsogram function in the private scope?

[Karim_Bastami]

Hi,
So this the Unreal Engine course before the remastering. I’m currently on section 2 (Bulls and Cows) - lecture 52

I just had a simple question, why did Ben decide to declare the IsIsogram prototype in the private section of the FBullCowGame Class? why not public, what difference does it make?

[DanM]

It’s kind of hard to understand at this stage but It’s an accessor level.
You have public, protected, and private.

public - can be accessed anywhere
protected - can only be accessed by the class itself and derived classes
private can only be accessed by the class itself.

Here’s a code example

class A
{
public:
    void Public();
protected:
    void Protected();
private:
    void Private();
}

class B : public A
{
    void Foo() 
    {
        Public(); //okay inherited from A and accessible
        Protected(); //okay inherited from A and accessible
        Private();//error inherited from A and inaccessible
    }
};

int main()
{
    A a;
    a.Public(); //ok
    a.Protected(); //error inaccessible
    a.Private(); //error inaccessible
}

[Karim_Bastami]

This isn’t what I meant, I know what these accessors do, I was asking why he decided to put the IsIsogram function in the private accessor level, why not public with the rest of the functions

[DanM]

Because it’s an implementation detail for CheckGuessValidity. Users shouldn’t need to know about it.