The public keyword is an access modifier for types and type members. Public access is the most permissive access level. There are no restrictions on accessing public members.

For a comparison of public with the other access modifiers, see Accessibility Levels.

Example

In the following example, two classes are declared, MyClass1 and MyClass2. The public members x and y of the MyClass1 are accessed directly from MyClass2.

// protected_public.cs
// Public access
using System;
class MyClass1 
{
   public int x; 
   public int y;
}

class MyClass2 
{
   public static void Main() 
   {
      MyClass1 mC = new MyClass1();

      // Direct access to public members:
      mC.x = 10;
      mC.y = 15;
      Console.WriteLine("x = {0}, y = {1}", mC.x, mC.y); 
   }
}

Output

x = 10, y = 15

If you change the public access level to private or protected, you will get the error message:

'MyClass1.y' is inaccessible due to its protection level.

See Also

C# Keywords | Access Modifiers | Accessibility Levels | Modifiers | 3.5.1 Declared accessibility