Re: Attributes vs. Accessors

>> Curious. Which do you prefer and why? >> 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. Personally, I always use the accessor methods. For the most part I agree with Stut -- they don't add much value. Where it does add value, though, is in the eventuality you ever need to change the attribute to a more restrictive visibility. If you ever run across this need (and I have a couple of times), the only thing affected is the class; you don't have to worry about changing all of your code using that class. Conceptually, it is my preference to keep a class as much of a black box as possible and accessor methods allow for that. thnx, Christoph