Name
Protected Keyword
Description
Used to declare classes and their members.
When the Protected
keyword is used to modify a
member declaration, the member being declared has direct access scope
to the class module in which the member is declared, as well as to
all derived classes in all projects. However, as far as object access
is concerned, the member is considered Private; that is, it can only
be accessed within the declaring class. (See the upcoming example.)
Declaring a class module as Protected limits all of the class’ members to Protected access (or stronger if the member has further specific access restrictions).
Example
Suppose we declare the following variable in a class module named Class1:
Protected sProtectedVar As String
Then within Class1 or any of its derived classes in any project, we can use the variable directly, as in:
Public Class Class2 Inherits Class1 Public Sub Test( ) MsgBox sProtectedVar End Sub End Class
On the other hand, the following code, located in a form module, is illegal:
Dim c as New Class1 c.sProtectedVar = "Donna"
VB .NET/VB 6 Differences
The Protected
keyword is new to VB .NET.
See Also
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