Question

I have something like

class X
{
    private:
    someclass obj;

    public:
    someclass& get()
    {
        return obj;
    }
};

I dont want to make obj public, so i get a reference of it and pass it around to functions.
Is this a good/ok practice or is it outright evil ?

Answer 1

If you pass a non-const reference as in your code then obj can be modifed from outside your class. If you wish that it cannot be changed from outside X you must return a const ref,

const someclass& get();

Note with this case it is worth adding another const after the function name

const someclass& get() const;

which tells the compiler that calling get() on an X won’t change its internal state. (This is not true of your example)