Out class has access to private inner class fields?

Under discussion

How is it possible that the outer class is able to access the private instance variables of the inner class? In this example, how does the

newNode

instance have access to the private field

value

in the outer class method? Here are both classes:

public class StringsLinkedList {
    public void add(String value) {
        Node newNode = new Node();
        newNode.value = "5"; // How is this possible given `.value` is private??
    }

    public static class Node {
        private Node prev;
        private String value;
        private Node next;
    }
}

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Guadalupe Gagnon

Level 37 , Tampa, United States

27 June 2022, 13:26

private protects from outside blocks of code. The Node class resides in same block of code as the main method. This means the main method has access to its private members. Any method inside the StringsLinkedList class, static or not, would have the same access. If the Node class were in a separate file or not in the StringsLinkedList class, then line 4 would have the error you are expecting:

public class StringsLinkedList {
    public void add(String value) {
        Node newNode = new Node();
        newNode.value = "5"; // This line will now have an error
    }
}

class Node {
   private Node prev;
   private String value;
   private Node next;
}