Access Modifiers

All class members have access modifiers. We already encountered them when we decorated our classes with the public keyword.

Access modifiers define a context in which a given class or its member can be used.

• The public modifier makes a class or its member public to all external code. They can be accessed from any other part of the program and even from a different program or assembly.
• The private modifier makes a class or its member closed to the external environment. A private class can only be accessed from the class where it’s defined. We can’t make a class private on the namespace level. Members that are private can only be accessed from within the class where they’re defined.
• The protected modifier can only be used with class members. These members are only accessible from the same class or any derived class.
• With the internal modifier, classes and members are only visible inside the assembly where they’re defined.

Note: An ...