Is it confusing to omit the "private" keyword from a class definition?

Question

I recently removed a private specified from a class definition because it was at the top, immediately after the class keyword:

class MyClass
{
private:
    int someVariable;
// ...

I thought that it was redundant.

A coworker disagreed with this, saying that it effectively "hid" the private nature of the data.

Most of our legacy code explicitly states the access specifiers, and usually intermingles them inconsistently throughout the definition. Our classes also tend to be very large.

I'm trying to make my newer classes small enough so that my class definitions are similar to:

class MyClass
{
    // 3-4 lines of private variables
protected:
    //  3-4 lines of protected functions
public:
    //  public interface
}

which would allow omission of the redundant access specifier while (hopefully) keeping the private members close enough to the struct/class keyword for reference.

Am I sacrificing readability for brevity, or are the struct/class keywords sufficient?

Answer 1

If you are very familiar with all the default access levels then you probably won't see any difference in readability if you omit them whenever they are unnecessary.

However you will find that many people you work with aren't 100% sure about the default access level rules. This is especially true for people who regularly use different languages where the rules might be different in the different languages. As a result they might get the rules mixed up.

Always specifying the access is the safest option, if only to help the people you work with have one less thing to worry about.

Answer 2

Technically, "private" at the beginning of a class or "public" at the beginning of a struct is redundant, however I personally do not like the intermingled style but rather like to order by access and by declaration type. Readability is more important to me as brevity. So I would have a section "public methods", "private attributes" and so on and I format them as such:

class A
{
public: // methods
private: // methods
private: // attributes
};

This of course also generates redundant access declarations. Also, I like putting "public" stuff first because that's most important to users of the class. So, I need an access specifier at the beginning anyway. And I put "public" at the beginning of a "struct" as well.