In java protected membes access from diff package

Question

In Java, how can I access protected members in a different package?

package p1
    class base      
        protected int x

package p2
    import p1.*
    class derived extends base
        int x

class subderived extends derived
     int x

From subderived main I want to access x of p1.base as protected specification we can use only inheritance we can't use reference to access base x. To access derived x we can use super.x, but from subderived, how can we access base.x?

Sergey Kalinichenko Sergey Kalinichenko · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-24T19:35:10

Protected members are accessible from immediately derived and sub-derived classes without any qualifiers: rather than writing

base.x = 123;

you can write

x = 123;

and it will compile fine, as long as it is in a method of a derived class. However, in order for this to work, you need to remove members with the same name from the derived class itself: otherwise, the base member is hidden, and cannot be accessed through more than one level of inheritance hierarchy through the normal syntax of the language, i.e. without using reflection.

In java protected membes access from diff package

1 Answers