public (C# Reference)

Article
11/18/2006

The public keyword is an access modifier for types and type members. Public access is the most permissive access level. There are no restrictions on accessing public members, as in this example:

class SampleClass
{
    public int x; // No access restrictions.
}

See Access Modifiers (C# Programming Guide) and Accessibility Levels for more information.

Example

In the following example, two classes are declared, Point and MainClass. The public members x and y of Point are accessed directly from MainClass.

// protected_public.cs
// Public access
using System;
class Point
{
    public int x; 
    public int y;
}

class MainClass
{
    static void Main() 
    {
        Point p = new Point();
        // Direct access to public members:
        p.x = 10;
        p.y = 15;
        Console.WriteLine("x = {0}, y = {1}", p.x, p.y); 
    }
}

Output

x = 10, y = 15

If you change the public access level to private or protected, you will get the error message:

'Point.y' is inaccessible due to its protection level.

C# Language Specification

For more information, see the following sections in the C# Language Specification:

3.5.1 Declared Accessibility
3.5.4 Accessibility constraints
10.2.3 Access Modifiers
10.2.6.2 Declared Accessibility

public (C# Reference)

Example

Output

C# Language Specification

See Also

Reference

Concepts

Other Resources

Additional resources