What is a good example to differentiate between fileprivate and private in Swift3

fileprivate is now what private used to be in earlier
Swift releases: accessible from
the same source file. A declaration marked as private can now only be accessed within the lexical scope it is declared in.
So private is more restrictive than fileprivate.

As of Swift 4, private declarations inside a type are accessible to extensions of the same type if the extension is defined in the same source file.

Example (all in one source file):

class A {
    private func foo() {}
    fileprivate func bar() {}

    func baz() {
        foo()
        bar()
    }
}

extension A {
    func test() {
        foo() // Swift 3: error: use of unresolved identifier 'foo'
              // Swift 4: no error because extension is in same source file
        bar()
    }
}

let a = A()
a.foo() // error: 'foo' is inaccessible due to 'private' protection level
a.bar()
  • The private foo method is accessible only within the scope of
    the class A { ... } definition. It is not even accessible from
    an extension to the type (in Swift 3, see the second note below for
    changes in Swift 4).

  • The file-private bar method is accessible from the same source file.

Notes:

  1. The proposal SE-0159 – Fix Private Access Levels suggested to revert to the Swift 2 semantics in Swift 4. After a lengthy and controversial discussion on the swift-evolution mailing list, the proposal was rejected.

  2. The proposal SE-0169 – Improve Interaction Between private Declarations and Extensions suggests to make private
    declarations inside a type accessible to extensions of the same type
    if the extension is defined in the same source file.
    This proposal was accepted and implemented in Swift 4.

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