Programming in the .NET Environment

Accessibility

Members of a type can have different accessibility levels. Accessibility levels define which other types can access the members of a type. In many situations, it is desirable to limit the accessibility of a member. If one member implements some functionality for a type, such as data validation of field values, then it may be useful to all other members of that type but may be considered an implementation detail of the type. Developers can limit the accessibility of the member so as to prevent clients from using it. This practice helps to localize the effects of change. For example, if the signature of such a privately scoped member changes, then the change will not affect any of the clients of this type. Thus the effect of the change ...