Question

As the title says: Is it good practice to create functions to access class variables?

I have seen quite a number of pieces of code that do something like the following:

class MyClass {
public:
void setx(int a);
void sety(int b);
int read_x;
int read_y;

private:
int x;
int y;

};

void MyClass::setx(int a) {
x=a;
}

void MyClass::sety(int b) {
y = b;
}

int MyClass::read_x() {
return x;
{

int MyClass::read_y() {
return y;
}

So rather than accessing variables directly(MyClass.x) they use functions to read and set the variable values etc.

Is this a standard or good practice?

Answer 1

Yes, accessor functions are preffered to direct member access for several reasons. They provide a unique access point, are easier to track and to debug.

For example, instead of setting a breakpoint everywhere in the code where MyClass.x is changed, you can just set a single breakpoint in MyClass::setX().

However, although better than direct member access, accessor methods are not without their drawbacks, if misused. For details, you can visit Getters and Setters are bad OO design?