Friend Function use in php

A friend function is a function that is not a member of a class but has access to the class's private and protected members. Friend functions are not considered class members; they are normal external functions that are given special access privileges. Friends are not in the class's scope, and they are not called using the member-selection operators (. and –>) unless they are members of another class. A friend function is declared by the class that is granting access. The friend declaration can be placed anywhere in the class declaration. It is not affected by the access control keywords.


class mylinkage
{
private:
mylinkage * prev;
mylinkage * next;

protected:
friend void set_prev(mylinkage* L, mylinkage* N);
void set_next(mylinkage* L);

public:
mylinkage * succ();
mylinkage * pred();
mylinkage();
};

void mylinkage::set_next(mylinkage* L) { next = L; }

void set_prev(mylinkage * L, mylinkage * N ) { N->prev = L; }

Friends in other classes
It is possible to specify a member function of another class as a friend as follows:
class C
{
friend int B::f1();
};
class B
{
int f1();
};

It is also possible to specify all the functions in another class as friends, by specifying the entire class as a friend.
class A
{
friend class B;
};