how to set private member data in c++

Question

I am making a poker probability program in C++. the program will make a deck, shuffle it, deal five cards and determine what kind of hand you have. This will run 16000 times and estimate the average amount of hands that come up.

I have made three classes, a card class, a deck class, and a hand class. the card class has a character for the suit and an int for the rank, the deck class has a vector of 52 cards which needs to be private, and the hand class has a vector of 5 cards which also needs to be a private member. now the deck class needs to have a dealHand() function which copies the first five cards of the deck into the hand vector, but how could I go about doing this when the hand vector needs to be private and cannot be accessed from the deck class?

this is my deck class

class deck
{
    public:
    deck();
    void shuffle();
    hand dealHand();
    void printDeck();

    private:
    vector<card> deckData;
    void loadDeck();


};

this is my hand class

class hand
{
public:
hand();
void printHand();

private:
vector<card>handData;
void initHand();
};

and this is the definition for my dealHand function

hand deck::dealHand()
{
    hand hand;
    for(int j=0; j<5; j++)
    {
        hand.handData[j].suit = deckData[j].suit;
        hand.handData[j].rank = deckData[j].rank;
    }
    return hand;

}

how could I make this function return an object of the type hand when its member is private?? thank you.

Answer 1

Declare "hand" class as friend of "deck" class.

class hand {
   friend class deck;
   ...
};

Now objects of "deck" class have access to private properties of class "hand" objects.

Answer 2

You need to add a setter for the private members like:

class hand
{
public:
   hand();
   ...
   void addCard( suit s, rank r );
   ...
private:
   vector<card>handData;
   ...
};

void hand::addCard( suit s, rank r )
{
    // if you had a constructor for card using suit and rank as parameters
    handData.push_back( card( s, r ) );
}   

Answer 3

you can just add a giveCard() method to the Hand class, that pushes it back, and at the same time it allows you to check if the hand doesn't already have five cards...