protected classes

[Anshuman Acharya]

is the access to protected methods outside their package be allowed to sub-subclasses too?
i mean, suppose i want to implement finalize() method of java.lang.Object and the class i am invoking it through is extending some other class, not Object directly. of course somewhere up the hierarchy its root is the Object. so does it have to declare explicitly the package as java.lang or not.
I have assumed that a class not extending another class can access the method without the package statement, coz such classes are implicitly assumed to directly extend Object.
Please comment.

[Manoj Chandran]

Anshuman,
Protected members(variables as well as methods) are accessible within the class in which they are defined and their subclasses.Yes any class which doesn't extend from any oyther class implicitly extends from Object class.Hence anyhow your class inherits the finalize() method of Object class.So their is nothing to worry about packages while dealing with Object class's resources!! ok?
Manoj Chandran

[Anshuman Acharya]

yea, i understand. my problem was more towards the clone() method . but that has also been resolved... thanx