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6.8 Modifiers

Sometimes, you may wish to hide things from inheriting programs, or prevent functions from being called from other objects. To do so you use modifiers. A modifier is simply a word written before a variable definition, function definition, class definition or an inherit that specifies how this identifier should interact with other objects and programs. These modifiers are available:
static
Static hides this identifier from the index and arrow operators, which makes it impossible for other objects to call this function unless a function pointer to it is returned from inside this program.
final
This prevents other objects from re-defining this identifier in programs that inherit this program.
local
This makes the identifier 'local' meaning that even if it is overloaded in an inheriting program, this program will still use this identifer.
private
This prevents inheriting programs from accessing this identifier. Note that inheriting program can still re-define the identifier. Also note that private does not imply static.
public
This is the opposite of private. This is the default for all identifiers. public can be used to override the effects of a private inherit.
protected
Reserved for future use.
When modifiers are used in conjunction with inherit, all the variables, functions and classes copied from the inherited class will be modified with the keywords used. For instance, private inherit means that the identifiers from this inherit will not be available to program inheriting this program. static private inherit will also hide those identifiers from the index and arrow operators, making the inherit available only to the code in this program.

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