CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.net
Michael Stum
Michael Stum

Reputation: 181124

protected members in a sealed class

I'm writing a WebPart, which means that I inherit from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart and I override the method protected override void CreateChildControls().

However, I'd like to make the class sealed if possible, but that gives two issues: Just sealing the class gives a warning "new protected member declared in sealed class".

Changing the access modifier from protected to private or internal gives a compiler error telling me I can't change the modifier when inheriting.

That leaves me wondering: Is there any problem with sealing it and ignoring the warning? Or could this lead to any negative side effects further down the road? It seems to work just fine, but the devil is usually in the details.

Edit: I was just being stupid. The "new protected member" error was for a function that was indeed NOT overridden and just accidentially was declared as protected. Thanks for the Pragma-Tip though!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 6800

Answers (4)

Christopher Lightfoot
Christopher Lightfoot

Reputation: 1167

A protected member can be seen by sub classes so you're slightly altering the interface of the class; If you declare it 'private' it's only ever seen locally so it doesn't affect the interface.

Declare your method private not protected and the warning should go away.

Upvotes: 6

Quibblesome
Quibblesome

Reputation: 25429

Sounds to me like it is being daft. I'd ignore the warning, after all it's only stating that what you are doing is illogical like having a public ctor on an abstract type. The worst case scenario is a bit of confusion.

I think i've had this as well but only in Compact Framework code, is it Full Framework in this case?

Upvotes: 0

Anton Gogolev
Anton Gogolev

Reputation: 115897

Are you sure you're overriding correctly? Personally I cannot repro this behavior. But if it worries you, you can use

#pragma warning disable 0628
// Offending code
#pragma warning restore 0628

Upvotes: 5

Jon Skeet
Jon Skeet

Reputation: 1504062

The fact that it says there's a new protected member declared in the class is slightly worrying.

Hmm... I can't reproduce this in simple test code:

using System;

public class Base
{
    protected virtual void Foo()
    {
    }
}

public sealed class Derived : Base
{
    protected override void Foo()
    {
    }
}

compiles without warnings with .NET 3.5SP1. Are you definitely overriding the base method? Check that you really have got the override modifier. (Sorry if that sounds patronising - I'm not trying to accuse you of being lax or anything. I'm just stumped otherwise...)

Upvotes: 4

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