Does the main method have to be public?

[Poornachandran R]

Does the main method have to be public?
becoz...even private works fine.

[Mani Ram]

See this link (Requires an account!)
It is a bug! But Sun has closed the problem saying "It won't be fixed" with the comment "The runtime allows call to private methods, because of reflection. Fixing it will cause potential troubles."
It violates the Encapsulation for sure!

[Alfred Kemety]

BUT put in mind that for the exam you have to go with the JLS not the compiler. JLS says it must be public.. so if it's private in the exam.. it should give an error at run-time..

[Valentin Crettaz]

Explanation by Kathy Sierra (to appear in the new SCJP FAQ):

Question: Is it allowed to declare the main method private?
Answer: Provided by Kathy Sierra
Former JVM versions (pre-1.4) allowed the main method to have any accessibility (private, etc).
This incompatibility with Section 12.1.4 of the Java Language Specification has been fixed as of version 1.4.
In order to invoke a main method from the command-line, it is now mandatory to declare the main method as follows:
public static void main (String[] args)
If the main method has any access level other than public, it will no longer run from the command-line.

[Poornachandran R]

Thanks a lot

[Arpana Rai]

According to RHE book the main() method is declared public by convention.It can have any visibilty modiefier.However, it is requirrement that it be static and void.

[Timothy Toe]

In order to invoke a main method from the command-line, it is now B]mandatory[/B] to declare the main method as follows:
public static void main (String[] args)

Just a note for those who doesn't know :
Becareful that there are many variations of declaring an array :

 
public static void main (String[] args)
public static void main (String [] args)
public static void main (String []args) 
public static void main (String args[])

[ November 26, 2002: Message edited by: Ioow Gneb ]

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

Poornachandran R

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