What is Friend?

[zchoyt]

Can someone please explain what the Friend keyword does.
Thanks

[Lethal]

Okay. I could be completely wrong, but I'll give ya the VB6 explanation of what the Friend property is, since I have just now dived into the world of .Net. Friend basically exposes functionality to other objects (classes) within a component, yet shields it's own existence to the outside world. For example, me, a client application that references a particular component. There might be a friend property or function within the component called 'LogEvent', which logs a certain event whenever something happens within the component. All of the guys within the component know the property (or function) exists, but me, the client, have no idea that 'LogEvent' even exists. I hope my example makes clears things up for you.

[Cander]

That sounds correct to me. A summary


Private - Available only to the scope of which it is declared

Friend - Available Application wide

Public - Available to any outside application.