Reputation: 82369

Is `internal` the same as `public` for a single project?

In a single project (ie assembly) is the internal attribute any different from the public attribute?

I don't see a difference, but I wanted to make sure there are no edge cases I am not thinking of.

Upvotes: 1

Answers (6)

Yuriy Faktorovich

Reputation: 68687

Yes, the difference comes in when somebody else is referencing your assembly. In that case only the public members will be visible. But don't forget, the internal/private members can still be accessed via Reflection/dynamics. Also it will no longer be labeled with the BindingFlags.Public, it uses BindingFlags.NonPublic instead.

Upvotes: 11

Ani

Reputation: 113442

In general, yes.

In very rare cases, there may be differences, especially in reflection-specific contexts. For example, Activator.CreateInstance(typeof(myType)) will succeed if the type has a public parameterless constructor, but may not if the type only has an internal one (atleast on .NET 3.5) - you will have to call the overload with nonpublic = true.

Also, note that interface implementations are always public. Consequently, Replace all -> "public" - "internal" from your editor may produce code that does not compile - the compiler will refuse to allow you to implement an interface's member with internal visibility.

Upvotes: 2

Bruno Campos

Reputation: 2188

Yes, basically internal means that classes can be only used inside your assembly, which will work the same way as public inside the assembly.
But if you think your assembly will be used by any projects, its better to use public on the classes that can be referenced.

Also if you declare a class as internal, and some method inside public, internal will override its accessibility, making it internal.

Upvotes: 1