Question

I came across a recent Audit report in our company for the code we maintain which says that we should not use Get in the method (not properties) naming like in GetSearchResults or GetXyzInformation. I looked up the MS guidelines (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4df752aw(VS.71).aspx) for method naming and as per that Get is allowed, so what are your thoughts on this, Can we have it or not from a standard perspective, if not why?

Additional Info
I am adding more information after the first set of answers, the Methods that i am referring to are the kind which involves a database interaction, so clearly properties are not ideal options.

Answer 1

It is perfectly legal (it is even legal to write methods of the form ‘get_Foo’ which would collide with the compiler synthesized get method if you were to declare a property Foo with a getter).

As to Whether it is a good thing:

1. If the method does serious work, has side effect or may throw an exception is it probable that it is not a good candidate for a property and the name is descriptive so should not be changed needlessly
2. If the method does no serious work making it a property is probably a good thing since it will make it easier to work with in calling code.
3. if the method does not actually ‘Get’ anything the name is bad and should be changed

The above points are subjective but the reason that hard rules like ‘never’ ‘always’ can be a bad idea is that the balancing of multiple subjective and competing factors is part of what being a good developer is all about.