benefit data hiding in c++?

[nannunancy]

we have concept of data hiding in c++..but what is its benefit..
its fine that the other classes cannot access the private members of a class..but wats its use??

[sicarie]

we have concept of data hiding in c++..but what is its benefit..
its fine that the other classes cannot access the private members of a class..but wats its use??

That's exactly its use - to hide stuff.

Okay, let me ask you - have you heard of "re-usable" code? What can be a danger of, say, working for a company that has a code base already, but you are tasked with adding a feature to that codebase. You are given documentation of the codebase, why would data hiding be beneficial in that case?

[weaknessforcats]

Here's an example: You have a date with three ints. One for monthm day, and year. You have written a lot of code using these three ints and, in fact, the names of these ints are scattered throughout all of the user code ever written using your date.

One day the boss says that you need to implment a CIM date. This one requires a string in the format yyyymmddhhmmss.nnnnnn. It is completely incompatible with three ints.

Because your ints were not hidden, all of your code and all of the user code will need to be fixed, recompiled, retested and re-released. You tell your bass you can't implement the new date. It's too much work.

Shortly thereafter you are fired.