Question

Is it good to have all the setter functions return a reference to the object in c++?

Answer 1

It’s a usable enough pattern if there’s a lot of things that need to be set on an object.

 class Foo  {       int x, y, z;  public:       Foo &SetX(int x_) { x = x_;  return *this; }       Foo &SetY(int y_) { y = y_;  return *this; }       Foo &SetZ(int z_) { z = z_;  return *this; }  };   int main()  {       Foo foo;       foo.SetX(1).SetY(2).SetZ(3);  } 

This pattern replaces a constructor that takes three ints:

 int main()  {       Foo foo(1, 2, 3); // Less self-explanatory than the above version.  } 

It’s useful if you have a number of values that don’t always need to be set.

For reference, a more complete example of this sort of technique is refered to as the ‘Named Parameter Idiom‘ in the C++ FAQ Lite.

Of course, if you’re using this for named parameters, you might want to take a look at boost::parameter. Or you might not…