Visual Basic® 2010 Unleashed

Declaring Classes

Classes in Visual Basic 2010 are declared with Class..End Class statements. Classes support the following visibility modifiers: Public, Protected, Friend, Private and Protected Friend. Classes with Public can be reached from other assemblies whereas classes with Friend visibility can be reached from within the assembly that defines them. Both modifiers are the only valid ones for non nested classes, as you will see later in this chapter.

Classes’ Scope

For further information on types and members scope, see the section “Scope” in this chapter.

The following are the only acceptable class declarations:

If you omit the qualifier ...