What's the use case of a protected method in a final class in Java?

Question

Consider this code from the official OpenJDK source of java.awt.font.TextLayout:

public final class TextLayout {

    /* ... */

    protected v         


        

Answer 1

Protected is (see access levels):

• For extending classes, regardless of package.
• All classes in current package can access it.

In the case of a final class, the method's used by other classes in the same package: it's the same as no access modifier (also called "package-private").