Why can't we define a top level class as private?

Question

Why does Java not allow a top level class to be declared as private? Is there any other reason other than \"We can\'t access a private class\"?

Answer 1

In theory, you could instantiate and call methods on a private top-level class (if such a thing were allowed by the language ... which it isn't!), but you would have to use reflection to do this. Sensibly (IMO) Sun decided that private top-level classes were not a good thing to support at the language level.

Actually, it is possible that the JVM might support top-level private "classes" created by bytecode magic. But it is not a useful thing to do.

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UPDATE - In fact, the current JVM spec makes it clear that the ACC_PRIVATE bit of the access flags word for a class is "reserved for future use", and that Java implementations should treat it as unset. Thus, the above speculation is moot for any JVM that strictly implements the current specification.