Private or Public?

[Cplusmayn]

I just wanted to know a dumb-down version of the difference between the two Private or Public within writing C++/C# code?

[Athar]

One allows member access outside of member function, the other doesn't.
Surely the source who told you that those two existed also told you what they meant?

[vlad from moscow]

They are as private and public correspondences.:)

[Cplusmayn]

@Athar yeah it does explained in a book that I have been reading and practicing typing C# code with the book is McGraw-Hill ISBN 978-0-07-158830-0, I'm a newbie so just learning a lot of this stuff. My reason for programming is to create applications and program PCB's to do certain things would this be a good language to begin with???

[Duthomhas]

In a nutshell:

A class separates the world into three pieces: things that are that class, things that are not, and things that are somewhere between.

For example, suppose we have a class like this:

    class point
    {
      double x, y;
    };

If I create a point like this: point pt;, then pt is an instance of the point type.

If I inherit from a point, I get another thing that both is and isn't a point.

So, the question is, who gets to see and play with the x and y members?

public:
Anyone.

protected:
Only points and objects that inherit from points.

private:
Only points.


A very simple rule of thumb might be: You should design your classes so that you only hide things in order to prevent outside stuff from breaking it.

Hope this helps.