Class is private or internal default in .net? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Why Visual Studio doesn’t create a public class by default?

msdn link tell us that

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ba0a1yw2.aspx

Default member accessibility of Class is private

Please explain whether it is Internal or Private by default ?

Answer 1

The default for all members is "the most private you could specify"¹.

So nested types are private by default, but top-level types are internal by default:

namespace Foo
{
    class ThisIsInternal
    {
        class ThisIsPrivate
        {
        }
    }
}

The rules are the same for all types - it doesn't matter whether it's a class, interface, struct, enum or delegate.

---

¹ with the slight exception of specific property getters/setters, where you can only be explicit about one part of the property when you're making it more private.

// The getter is public, the setter is private
public string Foo { get; private set; }

Answer 2

It may seem odd that a class is sometimes internal by default (when top level) and sometimes private (when nested). However, this simply means that all access modifiers are maximally restrictive by default. This also means that almost all usages of the word private are redundant - only those on property accessors are meaningful (they can restrict access to an otherwise non-private property).

So I prefer to think of the default as the consistent one - namely being conceptually private, and the keywords being inconsistent - internal sometimes means keep local to the context, and sometimes means grant access to the entire assembly :-). And private almost always means nothing - it's pure boilerplate which is therefore best left out (except in property accessors).