Help to understand the issue with protected method

Question

I\'m reading Sybex Complete Java 2 Certification Study Guide April 2005 (ISBN0782144195). This book is for java developers who wants to pass java certification.

Answer 1

From The Java Language Specification:

6.6.2.1 Access to a protected Member

Let C be the class in which a protected member m is declared. Access is permitted only within the body of a subclass S of C. In addition, if Id denotes an instance field or instance method, then:

• If the access is by a qualified name Q.Id, where Q is an ExpressionName, then the access is permitted if and only if the type of the expression Q is S or a subclass of S.
• If the access is by a field access expression E.Id, where E is a Primary expression, or by a method invocation expression E.Id(. . .), where E is a Primary expression, then the access is permitted if and only if the type of E is S or a subclass of S.

So the protected member is accessible in all instances of S, and the answer in your book is just wrong.