Member Access and Inheritance
Members of a class are often declared private to prevent their unauthorized use or tampering. Inheriting a class does not overrule the private access
restriction. Thus, even though a derived class includes all of the members of its base class, it cannot access those members of the base class that are private. For example, if, as shown here, Width and Height are made private in TwoDShape, then Triangle will not be able to access them:
Example
using System;
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
// Access to private members is not inherited.
// This example will not compile.
using System;
// A class for two-dimensional objects.
class TwoDShape
{
double Width; // now private
double Height; // now private
public void ShowDim()
{
Console.WriteLine("Width and height are " +
Width + " and " + Height);
}
}
// Triangle is derived from TwoDShape.
class Triangle : TwoDShape
{
public string Style; // style of triangle
// Return area of triangle.
public double Area()
{
return Width * Height / 2; // Error, can't access private member
}
// Display a triangle's style.
public void ShowStyle()
{
Console.WriteLine("Triangle is " + Style);
}
}
}
The Triangle class will not compile because the use of Width and Height inside the Area( ) method is illegal. Since Width and Height are now private, they are accessible only to other members of their own class. Derived classes have no access to them.
