Understanding protected and its use with collections

Originally Posted by

Hi,
>
I am a newbie to C# and I have a simple question for you. I have the
following two classes which are used to present information in Excel.
>
public class Environment : ICloneable, IComparable
{
readonly string name;
readonly int id; // the id of this env
with respect to the env sql table
>
public int LeftmostCell; // The column number in
Excel
>
...
}
>
public class Environments : IEnumerable, ICloneable
{
TestEnvironment[] testEnvironments;
>
void EstablishExcelLocations()
{
...
}
>
The function EstablishExcelLocations sets the values of LeftmostCell.
The problem I have is that I have to make LeftmostCell public and it
can now be set from anywhere.
When I derive a class, I often use protected to ensure that only the
derived class can access a certain property. But in this case I'm not
deriving, but it still feels to me that Environments comes from
Environment. Do you understand what I mean? It feels like Environments
should be able to access "protected" members in Environment.
>
Is there a better way of implementing the above if I don't want to
expose LeftmostCell?
>
Thanks,
>
Barry

Originally Posted by

Well, you can make it "internal" to limit access to just the calling
assembly, and simply don't change it from your other code... maybe that is
enough? By the way, I would recommend exposing this as a property (not a
field); if you are using C# 3 (VS2008 etc) then this is trivial:
>
internal int LeftmostCell {get;set;}
>
In C# 2 (VS2005 etc) you need more code:
>
private int leftmostCell;
internal int LeftmostCell {
* get {return leftmostCell;}
* set {leftmostCell = value;}
>
}
>
Marc