Private Shadows does not hide member variable in base class. Can it be done?

Marcus 1

I have one base class containing several member variables.

I have four derived classes that inherit the base class.

Two of the variables in the base class are not relevant to one of the four derived classes, so I was hoping to make them unavailable in Intellisense by re-declaring them in the derived class with Private Shadows. However, not only can they still be selected, they actually return the value from the base class! I was not expecting this behaviour at all.

Is there any way to hide irrelevant member variables? This doesn't work:

Public Class Foo
  Public member1 As String
  Public member2 As Integer
  Public member3 As New List(Of Rectangle)
End Class

Public Class Bar1
  Inherits Foo
  Private Shadows member2
  ' some code
End Class

'Elsewhere, in another class:
Dim b As New Bar1
Msgbox(b.member2) ' Intellisense let me select it. When run, no error. Msgbox shows 0.

Xingyu Zhao-MSFT 5,356 Reputation points

2021-11-01T08:41:45.307+00:00
Hi @Marcus ,
The base class defines the properties and behaviors common to subclasses

Two of the variables in the base class are not relevant to one of the four derived classes

In this situation, you can consider separating these two variables from the base class and put them into an interface,
The code looks like:

Public Class Foo Public member1 As String End Class Interface Foo2 Property member2 As Integer End Interface Public Class Bar1 Inherits Foo End Class Class Bar2 Inherits Foo Implements Foo2 Public Property member2 As Integer Implements Foo2.member2 End Class
Xingyu Zhao-MSFT 5,356 Reputation points

2021-11-04T07:49:02.617+00:00

Hi @Marcus ,
Do you still meet this issue? Please let me know if you need further help.