C# Accessibility Puzzler
The following derived class is accessing a private field from its base class, and the compiler silently looks to the other side:
public class Derived : Base
{
public int BrokenAccess()
{
return base.m_basePrivateField;
}
}
The field is indeed private:
private int m_basePrivateField = 0;
Care to guess how we can make such code compile?
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Answer
The trick is to declare Derived as an inner class of Base:
public class Base
{
private int m_basePrivateField = 0;
public class Derived : Base
{
public int BrokenAccess()
{
return base.m_basePrivateField;
}
}
}
Inner classes are given full access to the outer class members. In this case the inner class also happens to derive from the outer class. This allows us to "break" the encapsulation of private members.
