Re: A question of style - Properties

Quoting Mika Tuupola <tuupola@appelsiini.net>: > Don't remember seeing any answer to this. Is there any > opinion how should PEAR classes handle this? > > Personally I would prefer getProperty() and setProperty() > methods over accessing properties directly. It's basically an OO question. getXXX() setXXX() methods are standard practice for public properties - in java classes, for instance. But even in java there's nothing to prevent you from making your member variables public and accessing them directly. Here's a rule of thumb: if the property is something that should be exposed as part of an object's API, then there should be get/set methods for it. That way you can change internal data structures, variable names, add logic, etc. without breaking your API. -chuck