#310 – Accessibility of Fields in a Class

You can apply access modifiers to fields defined in a class to define their accessibility.  Accessibility dictates what other code is allowed to read and the write the value of a field.

• public – All code can read/write the field
• private – Only code in the defining class can read/write the field
• protected – Code in the defining class or derived classes can read/write the field
• internal – All code in the defining assembly can read/write the field
• protected internal – Code in the defining assembly or in derived classes can read/write the field

    public class Dog
    {
        // All code can access
        public string Nickname;

        // Only code in this class can access
        private string genericDogSecretName;

        // Code in this class or subclass can access
        protected int totalBarkCount;

        // Code in same assembly can access
        internal int invokeCount;

        // Code in same assembly or derived classes can access
        protected internal int barkInvokeCount;
    }