Public and Private declarations

- 2.2.13.6 -

TMT Pascal Language Description

Pascal Language Structure

OOP Extensions

Public and Private declarations

Public and private are standard directives in the Object Pascal language. Treat them as if they were reserved words. For readability, it is best to organize an object declaration by visibility, placing all the private members together, followed by all the protected members, and so on. This way each visibility reserved word appears at most once and marks the beginning of a new section of the declaration. So a typical object declaration should look like this:

type
  TObject = object
    private
      { Private declarations}
    public
      { Public declarations }
    end;

The scope of component identifiers declared in private component sections are restricted to the module that contains the object type declaration. Keep in mind that:

Inside the module, private component identifiers act like normal public component identifiers.
Outside the module, private component identifiers are unknown and inaccessible.

Use the public part to

Declare data fields you want methods in objects in other units to access
Declare methods you want objects in other units to access

Declarations in the private part are restricted in their access. If you declare fields or methods to be private, they are unknown and inaccessible outside the unit the object is defined in.

Use the private part to

Declare data fields you want only methods in the current unit to access
Declare methods you want only objects defined in the current unit to access


OOP Scopes	Table of Content	Virtual Methods

- 2.2.13.6 -