Question

This compiles well for me – However other people on a different thread are saying that protected classes cannot be declared in c# at top level

Is that the case?

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    protected class CsvReader
    {
    }
}

Answer 1

It doesn’t compile for me with either VS2008SP1 or VS2010 (using csc.exe from the command line in both cases).

Which compiler are you using?

From section 3.5.1 of the C# specification:

• Types declared in compilation units
  or namespaces can have public or
  internal declared accessibility and
  default to internal declared
  accessibility.
• Class members can
  have any of the five kinds of declared
  accessibility and default to private
  declared accessibility. (Note that a
  type declared as a member of a class
  can have any of the five kinds of
  declared accessibility, whereas a type
  declared as a member of a namespace
  can have only public or internal
  declared accessibility.)