clang-tidy - misc-override-with-different-visibility — Extra Clang Tools 22.1.8 documentation

# Extra Clang Tools 22.1.8 documentation

## clang-tidy - misc-override-with-different-visibility

# misc-override-with-different-visibility

Finds virtual function overrides with different visibility than the function in the base class. This includes for example if a virtual function declared as `private` is overridden and declared as `public` in a subclass. The detected change is the modification of visibility resulting from keywords `public`, `protected`, `private` at overridden virtual functions. The check applies to any normal virtual function and optionally to destructors or operators. Use of the `using` keyword is not considered as visibility change by this check.

    class A {
    public:
      virtual void f_pub();
    private:
      virtual void f_priv();
    };

    class B: public A {
    public:
      void f_priv(); // warning: changed visibility from private to public
    private:
      void f_pub(); // warning: changed visibility from public to private
    };

    class C: private A {
      // no warning: f_pub becomes private in this case but this is from the
      // private inheritance
    };

    class D: private A {
    public:
      void f_pub(); // warning: changed visibility from private to public
                    // 'f_pub' would have private access but is forced to be
                    // public
    };

If the visibility is changed in this way, it can indicate bad design or programming error.

If a virtual function is private in a subclass but public in the base class, it can still be accessed from a pointer to the subclass if the pointer is converted to the base type. Probably private inheritance can be used instead.

A protected virtual function that is made public in a subclass may have valid use cases but similar (not exactly same) effect can be achieved with the `using` keyword.

## Options

DisallowedVisibilityChange

  Controls what kind of change to the visibility will be detected by the check. Possible values are any, widening, narrowing. For example the widening option will produce warning only if the visibility is changed from more restrictive (`private`) to less restrictive (`public`). Default value is any.

CheckDestructors

  If true, the check does apply to destructors too. Otherwise destructors are ignored by the check. Default value is false.

CheckOperators

  If true, the check does apply to overloaded C++ operators (as virtual member functions) too. This includes other special member functions (like conversions) too. This option is probably useful only in rare cases because operators and conversions are not often virtual functions. Default value is false.

IgnoredFunctions

  This option can be used to ignore the check at specific functions. To configure this option, a semicolon-separated list of function names should be provided. The list can contain regular expressions, in this way it is possible to select all functions of a specific class (like MyClass::.*) or a specific function of any class (like my_function or ::.*::my_function). The function names are matched at the base class. Default value is empty string.