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My name is Samson and i am a beginner aspiring to be a professional java programmer.
I have a mind bugging question here, What's the importance of declaring a variable as protected?
since protected class instances or members can be accessed by other classes, whether or not they are in the same package.
Is it just that my knowledge of it is feeble or what? I could just use the " public " keyword instead....
Hi, Samson!. My name is Alex and i am a Java beginner too. As far as i know, controlling access to members of some class can affect the way other classes are related to each other (it can affect constructors, fields, parameters, methods and even an entire object or more). I have to practice more to understand better the use of access modifiers but i really think it all depends of your needs for the program. Please read these links for further information:
Controlling Access to Members of a Class (The Java™ Tutorials > Learning the Java Language > Classes and Objects)
In Java, what's the difference between public, default, protected, and private? - Stack Overflow
Java Access Modifiers - public, private and protected
I hope that helps,
cheers
That is not correct.Quote:
Originally Posted by realsoundkid
Private is visible to the class where it is declared.
Protected is visible to the class where it is declared, any class that extends that class, and any class in the same package as that class.
Only public is visible outside the package.
The official word.
In practise when you would like to share a variable or method to few classes but would like to hide it for rest of your code you can use protected variable by bundling similar classes in one package and sharing the variable/method as protected.
i will give u an example package1 has class-A containing protected member int p.This p is accessible in package1 as well the other class which extends the class-A. Protected member are like default members with the addition that they are accessible in child class as well which provide the ecapsulation.
You mean private is not visible anywhere else other than the class it was declared in.Quote:
Private is visible to the class where it is declared and to any class that extends the class where it is declared.
yes
Yes, that is what I mean, thank you for pointing that out. Hope the OP noticed too...Quote:
Originally Posted by helloworld922
Just to note all inner classes also have access.Quote:
Originally Posted by helloworld922