Illustrated C# 2012

C H A P T E R  4

Classes: The Basics

• Overview of Classes
• Programs and Classes: A Quick Example
• Declaring a Class
• Class Members
• Creating Variables and Instances of a Class
• Allocating Memory for the Data
• Instance Members
• Access Modifiers
• Accessing Members from Inside the Class
• Accessing Members from Outside the Class
• Putting It All Together

Overview of Classes

In the previous chapter, you saw that C# provides six user-defined types. The most important of these, and the one I’ll cover first, is the class. Since the topic of classes in C# is a large one, I’ll spread its discussion over the next several chapters.

A Class Is an Active Data Structure

Before the days of object-oriented analysis and design, programmers thought of a program as just ...