What are the characteristics of friend functions?

Friend functions are not a part of the class and are external. This function is a “Friend” of a class. This is to say, it has special privileges to access to the class's private and protected members.

What are the characteristics of friend functions?

- A friend function is not in the scope of the class, in which it has been declared as friend.

- It cannot be called using the object of that class.

- It can be invoked like a normal function without any object.

- Unlike member functions, it cannot use the member names directly.

- It can be declared in public or private part without affecting its meaning.

- Usually, it has objects as arguments.