Protected access via inheritance.

[O. Ziggy]

I thought i understood the protected access modifier but this test kind of confused me a bit.

The following class is in /home/delDir/Person.java

package delDir;

public class Person{
	protected int x = 5;
}

And this class in the home directory i.e. /home/ZiggyTest2.java

import delDir.*;

class SmallPerson extends Person{}

class ZiggyTest2{	

	public static void main(String[] args){
		
		SmallPerson p = new SmallPerson();
		System.out.println(p.x);
		
	}
}	

Running ZiggyTest2 produces the following error

ZiggyTest2.java:23: x has protected access in delDir.Person
                System.out.println(p.x);
                                    ^
1 error

I thought that i am accessing it using inheritance, i.e. using an instance of '"SmallPerson".
The way i understood it before is that i wont be able to access 'x' using an instance of 'Person' but if using a subclass of Person it should work. Why is this not the case in the above example?

[Andreas Svenkson]

SmallPerson has indeed access to protected members of its superclass Person via inheritance. But that's not what you're doing here - you are trying to access a protected member inside SmallPerson, from outside the class (ie: from ZiggyTest2) - and since ZiggyTest2 is not a subclass of Person, it cannot access the protected member.

In order to access the inherited member using inheritance, you would have to write something like this:

class SmallPerson extends Person {

public void showMember() {
System.out.println(x);
}
}

Now you have a public method in SmallPerson which is accessible to any other class, which via inheritance accesses the protected inherited variable x.

// Andreas

[O. Ziggy]

Oh so it can only be accessed directly using the class inheriting the parent. Got it. Thanks..