Question

I was told that for a Java subclass it can inherit all members of its superclass. So does this mean even private members? I know it can inherit protected members.

Can someone explain this to me. I am now totally confused.

Answer 1

No, the private member are not inherited because the scope of a private member is only limited to the class in which it is defined. Only the public and protected member are inherited.

From the Java Documentation,

Private Members in a Superclass

A subclass does not inherit the
private members of its parent class.
However, if the superclass has public
or protected methods for accessing its
private fields, these can also be used
by the subclass. A nested class has
access to all the private members of
its enclosing class—both fields and
methods. Therefore, a public or
protected nested class inherited by a
subclass has indirect access to all of
the private members of the superclass.

From the JLS,

Members of a class that are declared
private are not inherited by
subclasses of that class. Only members
of a class that are declared protected
or public are inherited by subclasses
declared in a package other than the
one in which the class is declared.

A useful link : Does subclasses inherit private fields?