CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#oopprotected
Rajeev Kumar
Rajeev Kumar

Reputation: 4963

Accessibilty about Protected Member

I have read all over the internet and books that protected member can be accessed within the class only and in the derived class only. I am experimenting with following code 

  class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {

    }
}
abstract class A
{
    protected int n_IntA = 0;
    public abstract void AMethod();
}
abstract class B : A
{
    int nb;
    public B()
    {

    }
    public abstract void GetProtected();      
    public override void AMethod()
    {

    }
}
class C : B
{
    public override void GetProtected()
    {
        // Here n_IntA is accessible why ??
    }
}

But here in class c n_IntA is accesible. Why? Derive class for A is B.So accessibility of n_IntA must be upto the class B only ??

Upvotes: 1

Views: 62

Answers (2)

Hemant_Negi
Hemant_Negi

Reputation: 2078

Protected members are always accessible from the derived class no matter what is the level of hierarchy. here in question n_IntA is accessible because

C inherits from B that inherits from A

also you did not modified the specifier in class B it remains protected in B and same thing happens for C

Upvotes: 2

bash.d
bash.d

Reputation: 13207

The accessibility goes through ALL of the inheritance-tree.

If you are no explicitly hiding a member, for example using new-operator, you can access These members far down the inheritance tree.
Take a look at MSDN and see how deep inheritance goes especially in the WinForms and WPF-classes. If you couldn't access members defined in System.Object the entire framework would break...

From MSDN:

Use the access modifiers, public, protected, internal, or private, to specify one of the following declared accessibility levels for members.

...
protected | Access is limited to the containing class or types derived from the containing class.

Upvotes: 2

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