Question

I am doing a refactoring on code is translated from other languages into Java and I want to do it automatically. My problem is that I have a lot of methods that aren’t private but are just called in the same class that they are declared and I want to make them private. I have a lot of classes and I guess if there is something that can help me to do it semi-automatically I would like to know it.

Do you know if I can look for these methods to make them private fastly? I am using Eclipse.

Answer 1

Replace all is one option.

But I suggest you don’t do it. private and public are there for the programmer. If you only call a method from the class itself, it doesn’t automatically mean it has to be private. The best thing you can do is go through them one at a time and ask yourself “should this method be part of the public interface or not?”.

Personally, whenever I encounter a private method in a class which I need to use, 99% of the time I leave it private and look for a workaround. That’s because I assume the original author of the code knew what he was doing. Of course, this doesn’t always apply.

private is a statement of intent. It’s like saying – if you need to use this from outside the class, you’re doing something wrong. You shouldn’t need this.