Explain this!!

[Sapna Korecherla]

Hi,
I found this question in javaranch mock exam.
Can one object access a private variable of another object of the same class?
The Answer is YES. though the description was given, I could not understand it. I mean it was not clear.
Anyone! explain this!!
Sapna

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

Please?

Politeness will get you a lot farther than demands.

[Maulin Vasavada]

hi sapna
all the scopes like Private, Protected etc are "LEXICAL". meaning, they are textual. they ARE NOT related to objects we create.
so, if i have private int x in my class C then i can refer to variable x withing the class definition ANYWHERE regardless of which object it belongs.
eg.

class C {
  private int x;
  C(int x) {
    this.x = x;
  }
  void test(C c1, C c2) {
     int temp = c1.x;
     // line 1
     c1.x = c2.x;
     c2.x = temp;
  }
  int getX() { return x; }
  static void main(String[]s) {
        C c1 = new C(1);
        C c2 = new C(2);
        c1.test(c1,c2);
        System.out.println("c1.test() returned:"+c1.x+":"+c2.getX());
  }
}

this will print swapped values as we exchanged the values of c1 and c2 objects.
here we access c2.x at line 1 but still it works! why? because the access of var x is not related to the object of class C (that is c2 here) but its LEXICAL. we are referring to var x in the textual scope of class C. thats why it works.
in the S.o.p in main method i have used c1.x and c2.getX() just to show that we can access x in anyway.
if we had another class called A and private var y in that class which we wanted to use in class C's method test() then it wouldn't work.
hih
maulin