Question

First of all i created a class called PrivateShirt1 and called a private field name after creating an object of the class within the same class file, and it worked.

public class PrivateShirt1{
   private String name;

   public static void main(String args[]){               
       PrivateShirt1 s1=new PrivateShirt1();
       s1.name="hi";

       System.out.println(s1.name);    
   }
}

next i created a separate file called PrivateShirt2 in which i put the main method of PrivateShirt1 and performed the function of compiling and calling it. After the modifications the files PrivateShirt1 and PrivateShirt2 look like this:

public class PrivateShirt2{ 

  public static void main(String args[]){               
     PrivateShirt1 s1=new PrivateShirt1();
     s1.name="hi";

     System.out.println(s1.name);    
  }


public class PrivateShirt1 {
   private String name;    
}

and when i compiled the PrivateShirt2 file, it gave an error that the attribute i was trying to call is private.

but then why did this not happen in the previous example? I mean, objects were created in both the cases and hence the rules should be equal for both, right? so why then this partial treatment? could anyone elaborate?

Answer 1

You need to look at java access control. The name variable in PrivateShirt1 has private access. Meaning that field can only be referenced from inside that class. PrivateShirt2 does not have access to that field. The reason your first call worked is because it was called within PrivateShirt1

http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/javaOO/accesscontrol.html