Why can I have access to the objects private property from another object?

[Alex Serna]

Hello,

My java skills have gotten a little rusty... could anyone please tell me why I can access the property "text" which is marked private from within the equals method? If the object "other" is a different object, shouldn't I be using an accessor method to access it's private properties?

public class PlainText implements Segment {

	private String text;
	
	public PlainText(String string) { 
		this.text = string;
	}
	
	public boolean equals(Object other){
		return text.equals(((PlainText) other).text);
	}

}

Thanks.

[Paul Clapham]

The accessibility options like "private" and "protected" control access at the class level, not at the object level.

[Alex Serna]

Thank you for the response. So if I have a component object of the same class as the the main class, that means that from the main class I can have access to all the component object's properties even if they are private. Right?

[Jeff Verdegan]

Alex Serna wrote:Thank you for the response. So if I have a component object of the same class as the the main class, that means that from the main class I can have access to all the component object's properties even if they are private. Right?

Well, you already have an answer that you apparently think tells you that. Why not write some code and try it? How much confirmation do you need?

[Campbell Ritchie]

They are inside the same class, so yes.

[rahul sengupta]

Access specifiers actually work with respect to classes.
So if we assign something private, it means that only within that class that member can be accessed and outside it, not.