Re: Attributes vs. Accessors

On 25 Aug 2008, at 13:32, Philip Thompson wrote:

Curious. Which do you prefer and why? <?php class Hello { public $hi; function __construct () {

       $this->hi = 'Well Hello There!';

} function hi () {

       return $this->hi;

} } $hello = new Hello (); // Access the value this way... echo $hello->hi; // or the accessor... echo $hello->hi(); ?> For publicly-declared variables, do you access the attribute directly or use an accessor?

If it's a public member variable there is no need for plain accessor methods - they add no value. I feel the same about private variables with plain get and set accessors, there's just no point unless the accessors are doing more than setting and getting the internal variable. -Stut -- http://stut.net/