Private method in groovy is not private

Question

class A {
    private def sayHello() {
       println "Anish"
    } 
 }

 def a_obj = new A()
 a_obj.sayHello()

output : Anish

Is there any way to protect sayHello() in groovy or am I missing something?

possible duplicate of [What does 'private' mean in Groovy?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4005700/what-does-private-mean-in-groovy) — Andrey Adamovich, Oct 21 '11 at 16:34

score 24 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 06 '16 at 13:36

24

There is defect on that in Groovy issue tracking system and that defect is still open.

edited Sep 06 '16 at 13:36

mkobit

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answered Oct 21 '11 at 16:30

Andrey Adamovich

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Incredibly, still unfixed in version 4. https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/GROOVY-3010 – Blaine Jun 04 '22 at 13:14

score 10 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

10

Searching for [groovy] private reveals:

groovy call private method in Java super class

What does 'private' mean in Groovy?

How to define private getter method in Groovy Bean?

It's not clear if it is a bug or by design, but it is going to get looked at again in Groovy 2.0

edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

Community

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answered Oct 21 '11 at 16:30

tim_yates

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The behavior same in Groovy 2.0 as well. – Dec 28 '13 at 19:01
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@kadaj it's now scheduled to be looked at for groovy 3 ;-) – tim_yates Dec 28 '13 at 19:35

score 6 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 20 '15 at 14:49

You can use closures to achieve a similar effect, basically the same way you would do information hiding with Javascript.

package test

class FunctionTests {

    def privilagedObj = {

        def privVar = 'foo'

        def privateFunc = { x -> println "${privVar} ${x}"}

        return {x -> privateFunc(x) } 
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        def test = new FunctionTests().privilagedObj()

        test('bar')

    }
}

score 3 · Answer 4 · edited Sep 25 '20 at 02:10

3

I think its a bug in groovy that is fixed in groovy++.

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/GROOVY-1875

edited Sep 25 '20 at 02:10

Ilya Serbis

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answered Oct 21 '11 at 16:30

hvgotcodes

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solstice333 · Answer 5 · 2017-09-07T03:45:29.477

1

As other posts have mentioned, this may be a bug in Groovy. I've been sticking to a simple convention of prefixing private member names with a leading underscore (similar to Python) to denote that it's private which helps me understand from a client side perspective what I should be calling.

edited Sep 07 '17 at 03:45

answered Feb 01 '17 at 02:06

solstice333

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Private method in groovy is not private

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