Class as private?

[Thirumalai Muthu]

Can a class be declared as private? I tried to declare a Class as private and got a compiler error. Why is it happening so?

[Vidhya Ramaswamy]

A top-level class can only be declared with only public or default(no modifier) access.
Just think about: if you declare a class as private, nobody can access it.

However, it is possible to declare an inner class as private.

[Thirumalai Muthu]

Can you please explain what is meant by top-level class?Thanks.

[Mateus Brum]

In a archive java (A.java)

public class A{ // This is a top-level class
class B{} // this is a inner class
private class C{} // and can be private
}
class Cat{} // It�s a top-level too

So, the inner class can take any modifier access that a regular variable can.
[ January 05, 2008: Message edited by: Mateus Brum ]

[Thirumalai Muthu]

Ok Now I understood.Thanks Vidhya and Mateus