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If all methods are public unless they are explicitly defined as something else, is it ever necessary to define a method as public?

wattostudios
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Emanuil Rusev
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3 Answers3

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Well, you answered the question already by naming the default: no, it is not necessary.

To quote the manual:

Class methods may be defined as public, private, or protected. Methods declared without any explicit visibility keyword are defined as public.

However, I consider it good practise to always do so.

Gordon
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Because public is the default it isn't necessary to define it.

fabrik
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There are two style tendencies in php - the "javaesque" majority considers visibility modifiers very important and uses them actively, in the pythonesque minority (i personally belong to) we think that all that public-private-interface-abstract stuff is nothing more but a waste of RAM.

user187291
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    I'd be interested to hear why! – sunwukung Sep 16 '10 at 09:05
  • @stereofrog: Neither of your responses answer sunwukung's question; they're actually rather cargo cult in nature. "If python doesn't use it, it must not be worthwhile" isn't an answer. – EricBoersma Sep 16 '10 at 14:17
  • @stereofrog: Neither of those come close to answering sunwukung's question. Asking a question with a desired answer, and deliberately stating that you're going to ignore people who disagree with you isn't valuable at all. Like sunwukung, I would be fascinated to read about why the python community considers access modifiers unnecessary, but neither of your answers have come close to providing that information. – EricBoersma Sep 16 '10 at 15:16