Reducing the visibility of a static method

Question

I know that a child cannot reduce the visibility of a non-static method and I understand why it is so.

I\'ve read however that \"static method can be hidden through

Answer 1

Based on hagubear's valuable comments, it seems that the author of a statement meant hiding a method through overloading it with a method having the same declaration.

Quoting this link:

We can declare static methods with same signature in subclass, but it is not considered overriding as there won’t be any run-time polymorphism. (...) If a derived class defines a static method with same signature as a static method in base class, the method in the derived class hides the method in the base class.

Thus, defining a method in a child class having exact same declaration effectively hides the original method in child. However, as in case of fields, casting to the parent will restore the original access.

Sample code:

public class Test {
    public static void main( String[] args ) {
        B b = new B();
        A a = b;
        b.f(); // "Access somewhat denied"
        a.f(); // "f()"
    }
}
class A { 
    public static void f() { 
         System.out.println("f()");
    }
}
class B extends A { 
    // *must* be public
    public static void f() { 
         System.out.println("Access somewhat denied");
    }
}