Question

I have this below piece of code which makes me puzzling about internals of a private class. I could see many search results for this error, still the below sounds wierd

namespace X
{
    public class Program
    {
        public static XYZ sample1;
        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            XYZ sample2 = new XYZ(); // OK  (1)
            sample1 = new XYZ();  // NOK    (2)
                    ...
        }
    }

    private class XYZ
    {

    }
}

If class XYZ is private, how does it work at (1) but not in (2)?

Answer 1

It works in both (1) and (2):

// OK, you declare and assign a local variable of a known type
XYZ sample2 = new XYZ();

// OK, you assign a static field of a known type
sample1 = new XYZ();

You can’t declare public static XYZ sample1; at all because it’s public when XYZ is private:

// This won't compile if XYZ is private
public static XYZ sample1;

This makes sense, users of X.Program will have access to its public members (in this case sample1) but they won’t be able to use them because XYZ is private to the assembly (then not accessible). That’s why the compiler says “inconsistent accessibility”.