Inheritance and private instance variables

Question

I've been reading a Java book. It says you should normally make your instance variables private and use getter/setter methods on them, but if you create a superclass, you have to make those variables public (or default?) to inherit them in the subclasses, right? And you can't redefine the variables as private in the subclass, can you?
I'm a little confused on this point. Thanks for any light anyone could shed on this.
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Nevermind...I think I figured it out!
Message was edited by:
NovaKane

Answer 1

Thanks to both of you for your responses. I think I've pretty much done what you did, Anan, in this little test program.
public class Animal
   private String name=null;
   public void setName(String n)
      name=n;
   public String getName()
     return name;
   public void makeSound()
public class Dog extends Animal
   public void makeSound()
      if (getName() !=null)
         System.out.println(getName()+" says, \"Bow Wow!\"");
      else
         System.out.println("I don't have a name...but \"Bow Wow!\"");
public class Cat extends Animal
   public void makeSound()
      if (getName() != null)
         System.out.println(getName()+" says, \"Meow!\"");
      else
         System.out.println("I have no name...but, \"Meow!\"");
import java.util.*;
public class Test
   public static void main(String[] vars)
        ArrayList<Animal> animals = new ArrayList<Animal>();
        Animal d = new Dog();
        Animal c = new Cat();
        d.setName("Fido");
        c.setName("Fluffy");
        animals.add(d);
        animals.add(c);
        for (Animal a : animals)
            a.makeSound();
}The "name" instance variable is private, but I can get at it through the getter/setter methods of the superclass, which are public. I should NOT be able to say something like...
d.name="Fido";Right?