C#

• The intuitive meaning of public is "access not limited".
  
• The intuitive meaning of protected is "access limited to the containing class or types derived from the containing class".
  
• The intuitive meaning of private is "access limited to the containing type".
  

When a type or member M is accessed, if M is protected, the access is permitted if it occurs within the class in which M is declared, or if it occurs within a class derived from the class in which M is declared and takes place through the derived class type (Section 3.5.3).

Otherwise, if M is private, the access is permitted if it occurs within the type in which M is declared.

As described in Section 3.4, all members of a base class, except for instance constructors, destructors and static constructors, are inherited by derived types. This includes even private members of a base class. However, the accessibility domain of a private member includes only the program text of the type in which the member is declared.

Zoltan Balazs wrote:

Anyway why would you derive a class with private constructor and instantiate that?

class Base
{
   public int x;

   public Base() { x = 20; }
}

class Derived : Base
{
   public Derived() {}
}

Derived d  = new Derived();
Console.WriteLine(d.x);

Captain See Sharp wrote:

Are you saying that the C# compiler implicitly calls the base's constructor?

class Base
{
   public Base(int x){}
}

class Derived : Base
{
   public Derived() {} // won't compile, as compiler attempts to call Base() and
                       // no default constructor exists.
}

S. Senthil Kumar wrote:

That's why you'll see code like this fail to compile

Captain See Sharp wrote:

will it call the parent's parameterless constructor for all of the child's constructors if you do not explicitly call a specific base constructor?