Class construction: function vs. method?

Question

This question could be answered in any general programming forum, but I thought I would get the best response here:
Say I am coding a class and need to create a function; it is only used in the constructor. Would it be better to create a protected/private method, or just write a function within the constructor?
I'm not sure it matters, but I'm really curious; it struck me when I read through a programme I wrote not very long ago, that I seemed to it randomly - unless, of course, more than one method in the class use the function, or it needs to be accessible to the outside (public method).

Answer 1

If piece of code can be reused, it should be extracted into method.
If your method (constructor) gets bulky and you need to organize it - you can again extract pieces into methods.
You should ask if there're any benefits of nested functions
If you want to mark blocks of code inside of your constructor, which creating nested functions basically is, you should use comments
instead of
public function myConstructor() {
     doSomething1();
     function doSomething1() {
     doSomething2();
     function doSomething2() {
you should rather write
public function myConstructor() {
     // do something 1
     // do something 2
I think it's much cleaner and does exactly the same as single-use nested functions. As I said, I would leave nested functions where they belong: to the dark ages of AS2
It doesn't matter how many private functions your class has, if you name them right, there can't be a problem.
Other than extensibility and accessibility matters, I would say it's a matter of programming hygiene not to use nested functions.