Question

what are the characteristics of protected access modifier

Answer 1

The protected access modifier is accessible within package and outside the package but through inheritance only.

The protected access modifier can be applied on the data member, method and constructor. It can't be applied on the class.

Example of protected access modifier
In this example, we have created the two packages pack and mypack. The A class of pack package is public, so can be accessed from outside the package. But msg method of this package is declared as protected, so it can be accessed from outside the class only through inheritance.

//save by A.java
package pack;
public class A{
protected void msg(){System.out.println("Hello");}
}
//save by B.java
package mypack;
import pack.*;

class B extends A{
public static void main(String args[]){
B obj = new B();
obj.msg();
}
}
Output:Hello