[CSC 204] Re: Private Methods in Shipping Crate Assignment

[Andrew J. Pounds]

> Dr. Pounds,
>    In the Shipping Crate assignment, you said that it was highly 
> desirable that we declare private methods for things like getting the 
> ball count. This makes it so that it can only be used inside the 
> program. Do we want to make all of the other get methods private as 
> well? I'm not too sure, because it prevents us from getting the values 
> from outside, and not every method is called from the toString method.
>
>

In my shipping crate class I have some private methods for doing various 
things.  One of these determines the number of balls in the crate based 
on the instance variables.  A public method then returns this value to 
the calling program.   You don't have to use private method -- I just 
wanted you to recognize that they really could make your life easier.



-- 
Andrew J. Pounds, Ph.D.  (pounds at theochem.mercer.edu)
Associate Professor of Chemistry and Computer Science
Mercer University,  Macon, GA 31207   (478) 301-5627