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classoopdefinitionaccess-modifiers

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

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

Solution

  • 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.