Question

I have a class ClassA that is a base class of other classes. I want this class constructor to be internal and protected so that it can’t be inherited and instantiated from outside of my assembly (I can’t make it sealed because I have other internal classes inheriting from it, you can see my other related question here) so I modified it to be like this:

public abstract ClassA{
    internal protected ClassA(){
    }
}

I have been told that this won’t work as the combination internal protected is interpreted as internal OR protected which apparently makes the constructor only protected 🙁 (visible from the outside)

Questions

1. If that is true, why is internal protected interpreted as internal OR protected and not as internal AND protected?
2. Is there a way I can declare a constructor internal and protected?

Answer 1

Specifying internal is enough.

It’s an abstract class – it’s implied that its constructor is protected because you can’t make an instance of it – you can do nothing BUT inherit it.