Question

I read that doing:

public final void foo() {}

is equals to:

private static void foo() {}

both meaning that the method is not overridable!

But I don’t see the equivalence if a method is private it’s automatically not
accessible…

Answer 1

It’s true that you can not @Override either method. You can only @Override a non-final instance method.

• If it’s final, then there’s no way you can @Override it
• If it’s static, then it’s not an instance method to begin with

It’s NOT true that they’re “equal”, because one is private static, and the other is public final.

• They have different accessibility level
• The instance method requires an instance to invoked upon, the class method doesn’t
• The class method can not refer to instance methods/fields from the static context

You can not @Override a static method, but you can hide it with another static method. A static method, of course, does not permit dynamic dispatch (which is what is accomplished by an @Override).

References

• JLS 8.4. Method Declarations
  • 8.4.3.2 static Methods
  • 8.4.3.3 final Methods
  • 8.4.8 Inheritance, Overriding, and Hiding
    • 8.4.8.1 Overriding (by Instance Methods)
    • 8.4.8.2 Hiding (by Class Methods)

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