Private Methods Over Public Methods

Question

I was examining the StringTokenizer.java class and there were a few questions that came to mind.

I noticed that the public methods which are to be used

Answer 1

Making functions private gives you advantage in following cases :

1. Making function private gives JVM compiler the option of inlining the function and hence boosting up the application performance
2. If the class is inheritable and you extend it from a child class, then in case if you want to hide the functions from child class then you can do this (you can extend StringTokenizer).
3. If a piece of code has to be used in multiple functions the you move that code in private utility method