Derived class and objects of a derived class can access public members of a base class:
class MyBaseClass { public: /*from w w w .ja va 2 s .c om*/ char c; int x; }; class MyDerivedClass : public MyBaseClass { // c and x also accessible here }; int main() { MyDerivedClass o; o.c = 'a'; o.x = 123; }