public methods in package-private classes

Question

Does it make a difference to mark methods as public in package-private classes?

class SomePackagePrivateClass
{
    void foo();          // pack         


        

Answer 1

It makes very little difference, unless the class is extended by a public (or protected nested) class.

As a matter of consistency, I'd go for public. It should be rare for methods to be anything other than public or private.

There are a number of examples of public methods in the package private java.lang.AbstractStringBuilder class. For instance length() is public in AbstractStringBuilder and is exposed in the public class StringBuilder (overridden in StringBuffer to add synchronisation).