What are public, private and protected in object oriented programming?

class oop definition access-modifiers
Delirium tremens picture Delirium tremens · Jun 20, 2009 · Viewed 219.4k times · Source

What are public, private and protected in object oriented programming?

Answer

Ben S picture Ben S · Jun 20, 2009

They are access modifiers and help us implement Encapsulation (or information hiding). They tell the compiler which other classes should have access to the field or method being defined.

private - Only the current class will have access to the field or method.

protected - Only the current class and subclasses (and sometimes also same-package classes) of this class will have access to the field or method.

public - Any class can refer to the field or call the method.

This assumes these keywords are used as part of a field or method declaration within a class definition.

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