Question

Hey SO community,
I saw here: http://www.mustap.com/phpzone_post_203_setter-and-getter an argument for using
a type of property handling common to C#, that is:
If in C#, you can define a class like this:

public class Person 
{
    private string _name;
    public string Name
    {
        get{ return _name; }
        set{ _name = value; }
    }
}

then why is it wise or not to define a similar property in php like this:

public class Person
{
    private var $name;    

    public function Name() 
    {
        if(func_num_args() == 0) {    return $this->name;  } 
        else {$this->name = func_get_arg(0);  }
    }
}

Answer 1

IMO, that doesn’t look clean in PHP. It’s like you’re trying to jam the C# way into PHP because you think it’s a nice feature of C#.

I see it as: In PHP, you’re making a single function for doing two completely different things, which doesn’t make sense. Meanwhile, in C#, it is single property, which is designed to be a single point of access for an object to be set/retrieved.