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Message:

Use a public method in ancestor

Posted by Kishori Sharan on April 28, 2001 at 2:30 PM

Of course, memory is aloocated for private variables in ancestor when an object of descendant is created. However, you cannot refer to a private variable in ancestor using super in descendant. The correct way to using the private variables from ancestor is to provide pulic methods in ancestor which will return the private variable. For example,

class Ancestor {
private int num = 200 ;
public int getNum ( ) {
return num ;
}
}

class Derived extends Ancestor {
public static void main ( String[] args ) {
Derived d = new Derived ( ) ;
// You can use private variable num in ancestor calling
// getNum ( )
Sysyem.out.println ( "num in ancestor is " + getNum ( ) ) ;
}
}