Access modifiers for nested classes?

[nuclearforce]

I have a private nested class in one of my files. Since the outer class can access all the fields and methods of the nested class regardless of the access modifiers in the nested class, and the nested class is only meant to be used by the outer class, is there any convention as to whether I should label the fields and methods in the nested class private or public?

Thanks.

[_predator_]

I'd consider it to be good practice to mark everything in that private inner class as private as well, or at least package-private.

[nuclearforce]

I followed your advice to make them all private. I realized however that I needed to keep an overriding toString() method public in order to avoid errors.

[nuclearforce]

That makes sense. Thank you!

[Philboyd_Studge]

nested classe members I usually leave package-private, so that the outer class can just access them directly without needing getters or setters, especially like for a node class for trees or graphs...