Hi Ajo, Le 11/07/2013 20:38, Ajo Fod a écrit : > More classes can be used/extended if fields generally default to protected > instead of private as it seems it does in classes in CM now. > > Case in point is in : https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MATH-1003
In fact, having protected members is often not considered a good thing. If for example you look at checkstyle VisibilityModifier check, you will see that its protectedAllowed property is set to false by default. For Apache Commons Math, we have decided to not use the default value and our setting in checkstyle.xml explicitly put protectedAllowed to true. However, this does not mean everything should be protected by default. It is rather a case by case decision, and we have a tendency to prefer restricting access than opening it.: as you have noticed there are more private than protected fields. In many cases, including the one you mention for inverting diagonal matrices, its seems safer to add a protected getter for the field than putting the field itself protected. It allows read only access to derived class which seems sufficient in this case. In some other cases, a setter may also be added, but direct reference to the field itself is a dangerous thing that should be looked at precisely. best regards, Luc > > Cheers, > Ajo > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org
