How to make a property of a class accessible to another certain class without making it public?

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In the code below, I want to access StackElement.below in LinkStack.Pop(), so I cannot decorate StackElement.below as private. However I also don't want to make it public because it's not safe if any other class can access the property. What should I do then? Thanks in advance.

public class StackElement
{
    public int value;
    public StackElement below;
}
public class LinkStack
{
    private StackElement topElement;
    private int count, capacity;

    void Pop()
    {
        topElement = topElement.below;
    }
}
access-modifiers class c#
1 Answers

If you're trying to restrict the below field to only the StackElement and the LinkStack class, then it's best to put the LinkStack class inside StackElement.

public class StackElement
{
    public int value;
    private StackElement below; // now private

    public class LinkStack
    {
        private StackElement topElement;
        private int count, capacity;
        void Pop()
        {
            topElement = topElement.below;
        }
    }
}

I don't know if that is architecturally appropriate for your application or not.

If you only need to protect the field from access outside the assembly, then make it internal instead.

internal StackElement below;
gunr21710
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