What is the difference between public, protected, package-private and private in Java?

In Java, are there clear rules on when to use each of access modifiers, namely the default (package private), public, protected and private, while making class and interface and dealing with inheritance?

Answer

The official tutorial may be of some use to you.

______________________________________________________________
|           │ Class │ Package │ Subclass │ Subclass │ World  |
|           │       │         │(same pkg)│(diff pkg)│        |
|───────────┼───────┼─────────┼──────────┼──────────┼────────|

|public     │   +   │    +    │    +     │     +    │   +    | 
|───────────┼───────┼─────────┼──────────┼──────────┼────────|
|protected  │   +   │    +    │    +     │     +    │        | 
|───────────┼───────┼─────────┼──────────┼──────────┼────────|
|no modifier│   +   │    +    │    +     │          │        | 
|───────────┼───────┼─────────┼──────────┼──────────┼────────|
|private    │   +   │         │          │          │        |
|___________|_______|_________|__________|__________|________|
 + : accessible         blank : not accessible