protected class

[Jammy Wells]

why a class cannot be protected?

[marc weber]

Originally posted by Jammy Wells:
why a class cannot be protected?

A class can be protected if it's nested.

As to why a top-level class can't be protected... What would this mean?

[jim xu]

In terms of the class member, protected means only the inherited classes can see those members. The package access for class is somewhat like that. Only classes inside the same package can see that class. So can we treat the default 'package access' for a class like a 'protected' class?