Software maintenance continues to be a time and resource intensive activity. Any efforts that
help to address the maintenance bottleneck within the software lifecycle are welcome. One …

Studies which consider the extent to which the encapsulation of a class is weakened by
direct access to its hidden members (such as through the use of the friend construct in C++) …

Previous research has highlighted the extensive use of the C++ friend construct in both
library-based and application-based systems. However, existing software metrics do not …