Hi,
As akhil had mentioned in his post...
We cannot instantiate the class with only private constructor..
Such class object can be created only in that same class...
So in the event of inheriting this class...you cannot instantiate an object of the sub class...since the base class constructor is not visible to the sub class..
If it is protected ....it is visible in any other class withing this package and any other class that extends this base class...
So we can instantiate an object of this sub class..
But if we want to instantiate an object of the base class elsewhere ...in a different package..it behaves as a private scope...whether you are extending that class or not...
In case you are extending...you can cannot create directly the base class.. instance...but you can create instance of the extended class.. in this extended class..
[ October 05, 2005: Message edited by: A Kumar ]