Overview

I have used nested classes which accessed the private members of top level classes for some time, and discovered that a top level class can access the private members of nested classes. Recently, I discovered that nested classes can access private member or other nested classes. i.e. where the two classes are not nested, but share a top level class.

Example

Perhaps private should be called "file local" c.f. package local. ;)

public interface MyApp {
    class Runner {
        public static void main(String... args) {
            // access a private member of another class
            // in the same file, but not nested.
            SomeEnum.VALUE1.value = "Hello World"; 
            System.out.println(SomeEnum.VALUE1);
        }
    }

    enum SomeEnum {
        VALUE1("value1"),
        VALUE2("value2"),
        VALUE3("value3");
        private String value;

        SomeEnum(final String value) {
            this.value = value;
        }
        public String toString() {
            return value;
        }
    }
}