Best way to expose protected fields

Question

I have a base class like this:

 public class BaseModalCommand
 {

    protected object m_commandArgument;
    protected int m_commandID;
    protected int m_         


        

Answer 1

Paul Alexander is correct and so is FxCop.

You want to make your fields private and expose them through a property to prevent derived classes from changing the variable by themselves. Forcing them to go through a property gives the base class a chance to validate and/or reject any modifications.