Re: Is there a simple way to enforce a private method in a subclass?

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 8:36 AM, Richard Quadling <rquadling@gmail.com>wrote: > If I have an abstract class of Task and I want all subclasses of Task > to have a private method _runTask, is there a way to enforce this? > I cannot think of a reason to force a class to have a specifically-named *private* method. Since it's private, you cannot call it from outside the class--not from its superclasses nor any subclasses. Since it cannot be exposed in the class's API, there's no point in forcing a particular name. If you are using the Template Method pattern [1], make the method protected. This allows the superclass that declares the abstract method to call it and forces its subclasses to implement it given the name you decide. David [1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TemplateMethodPattern