title: Do Subclasses Inherit Private Instance Variables From Superclasses
body: <p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4716040/does-subclasses-inherit-private-fields">Do subclasses inherit private fields?</a></p>
  
  <p>This question addresses the same problem but I don't quite understand how that satisfies the (seemingly) contradictory situations below.</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/IandI/subclasses.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/IandI/subclasses.html</a></p>
  
  <p>Says that "A subclass does not inherit the private members of its parent class."</p>
  
  <p>This means that it neither inherits private instance variables nor private methods right?</p>
  
  <p>However, how does this work if it inherits a public accessor method from its parent? It returns an instance variable that it doesn't know exists?</p>
  
  <p>Also, my computer science book (Baron's AP Computer Science A) has the correct answer to a question that says that "The (Subclass) inherits all the private instance variables and public accessor methods from the (Superclass)." </p>
  
  <p>Isn't this in contraction to oracle's tutorial?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks for your help</p>