Enum Constructor - Exception and Accessibility

[Chinmay Naik]

I have following questions about Enums:

1) Can an enum constructor throw any checked exceptions?
I wrote the following code but I am getting compile time error saying unhandled exception of type Exception.

enum Meal {
	
	BREAKFAST("0730"), LUNCH("1200"), SNACKS("1700"), DINNER("2100");
	
	private String time;
	Meal(String time) throws Exception {
		this.time = time;
	}
}

Can somebody please explain why? Is there any way, wherein we can write enum constructor that throws some checked exception?
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2) Also, can somebody tell me why compiler does not allow me to declare enum constructor of any enum as public or protected. It says, only private is permitted. However, I could declare enum constructor with no modifier (i.e. with default scope). So why only default scope and private scope is allowed for enum constructors?

[Alfred Swensen]

Chinmay Naik wrote:
1) Can an enum constructor throw any checked exceptions?

AFAIK, no. To understand enums I try to think of them as pure syntactic suger, behind the scenes the java compiler could (at least theoretically) be transform them into a plain old java class before compiling them:

class Meal extends Enum {
    public static final Meal BREAKFAST = new Meal("0730");
    public static final Meal LUNCH = new Meal("1200");
    public static final Meal SNACKS = new Meal("1700");
    public static final Meal DINNER = new Meal("2100");

    private String time;

    private Meal(String time) throws Exception {
        this.time = time;
    }
}

If you try to compile that, you see that you get exactly the same error message, but now you understand why the Exception is illegal:

Test.java:5: unreported exception java.lang.Exception; must be caught or declared to be thrown
    public static final Meal BREAKFAST = new Meal("0730");

2) Also, can somebody tell me why compiler does not allow me to declare enum constructor of any enum as public or protected. It says, only private is permitted.
However, I could declare enum constructor with no modifier (i.e. with default scope). So why only default scope and private scope is allowed for enum constructors?

public and protected are forbidden because then you would imply that you are planning to call the constructor from outside the class - as Enums may only consist
of compile time constants, this must be prohibited.

Regarding the "default" access level, I tend to use my above explanation that an enum is just a convenience representation and that the compiler will add an "private" implicitly before compiling it.

[karthick chinnathambi]

this is to prevent you from calling enum-constructor explicitly......
you can't call an enum constructor explicitly