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Message:

Just to exercise your own control

Posted by Kishori Sharan on January 07, 2001 at 12:33 PM

How: It is used in same way as other type of constructors e.g. public, protected , default access, just to create an instance of the class. However, a private constructor can be used only inside that class methods to create objects of that class.
Why: I can give you two good examples for why.
1) To use Singleton pattern so that you have only one instance of you class all the time. In this case make your constructors private and give a method where in you maintain only one instance of your class.
2) If you don't want to let others inherit your class then you can declare your class final or alternatively you can declare all construtors private. In this case you will have to create a default construtor too and make it private even if you don't create one.

Thanx
Kishori