999     Bob     120     3
111     Jill    870     4

The public Visibility Modifier

The private visibility modifier keeps outsiders from looking in. However, the access methods are intended for outsiders, and have to be visible to outsiders in order to be useful. The public access modifier explicitly says that a method or variable of an object can be accessed by code outside of the object.

The public visibility modifier is usually used for all access methods and constructors in a class definition. Most variables are made private. Here is a skeleton of the CheckingAccount class:

class CheckingAccount
{
  private String accountNumber;
  private String accountHolder;
  private int    balance;
  private int    useCount = 0;

  ___________ CheckingAccount( String accNumber, String holder, int start )
      { . . . . }
  private void incrementUse() { . . . . }
  ___________ int currentBalance() { . . . . }
  ___________ void  processDeposit( int amount ) { . . . . }
  ___________ void processCheck( int amount ) { . . . . }
  ___________ void display() { . . . . }

}