Accessing private fields from an subclass whoes parent is abstract.

Question

I seem not to be able to access some private fields from a subclass who's parent is abstract...
here is some code to demonstrate this: (based on yawmark's code)
import java.lang.reflect.*;
import java.net.URLClassLoader;
import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
class PrivateReflection {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        Private p = new Private();
        File f=new File("test.jar");
        URL[] urls=new URL[1];
        urls[0]=f.toURL();
        URLClassLoader loader=new URLClassLoader(urls);
        Class c=loader.getClass();
//        Class c=p.getClass();
        Field field = c.getField("packages");
        field.setAccessible(true);
        System.out.println(field.get(p));
class Private {
    private String packages = "Can't get to me!";
    private void privateMethod() {
        System.out.println("The password is swordfish");
}There is no need for a test.jar file to be created.
I know for a fact that the ClassLoader abstract class defines a field called "packages" which is an HashMap.
How do i access this private field?
I am in the process of making a utility which re-compresses a inputed JAR using other compression methods than normal zip compression while still keeping the same functionality as the inputed JAR.
I do have it working for Executable JARS: www.geocities.com/budgetanime/bJAR.html
This old version only works for executable JARs and uses Bzip2 compression.
I believe i have been able to solve all but one last problem to making re-compressed JARs which work as "library" JARs. This last problem is "removing" temporary prototype classes from the system loader and replacing them with the actual decompressed classes. As there seems not to be an nice way to do this i will have to manually remove references of the classes from the system class loader which is why i am asking this question.

Answer 1

lol! i have solved my problem... it was because i was using the getField() method instead of the getDeclaredField() method.