Question

Okay, just about everywhere I read, I read that getters/setters are “evil”.
Now, as a programmer who uses getters/setters often in PHP / C#, I do not see how they are alive. I have read that they break encapsulation, etc etc, however, here is a simple example.

class Armor{

  int armorValue;
public:
  Armor();
  Armor(int); //int here represents armor value
  int GetArmorValue();
  void SetArmorValue(int);
};

Now, lets say getters and setters are “evil”.
How are you supposed to change a member variable after initialization.

Example:

Armor arm=Armor(128); //armor with 128 armor value

//for some reason I would like to change this armor value
arm.SetArmorValue(55); //if i do not use getters / setters how is this possible?

Lets say the above is not okay, for whatever reason.
What if my game restricts armor values from 1 to 500. (No armor can have a piece that has more than 500 armor or less than 1 armor).

Now my implementation becomes

void Armor::SetArmor(int tArmValue){
      if (tArmValue>=1 && tArmValue<=500)
         armorValue=tArmValue;
      else
         armorValue=1;
}

So, how else would I impose this restriction without using getters/setters?
How else would I modify a property without using getters/setters?
Should armorValue just be a public member variable in case 1, and the getters/setters used in case 2?

Curious. THanks guys

Answer 1

You have misunderstood something. Not using getters/setters breaks encapsulation and exposes implementation details, and can be considered “evil” for some definition of evil.

I guess they can be considered evil in the sense, that without proper IDE/editor support, they are somewhat tediois to write in C++…

One pitfall of C++ is to create non-const reference getter, which allows also modification. That’s same as returning a pointer to internal data, and will lock that part of internal implementation, and is really no better than making field public.

Edit: based on comments and other answers, what you heard probably refers to always creating non-private getter and setter for every field. But I would not call that evil either, just stupid 😉