Question

Say I have some class:

public class A {
    private int val = 0;

    public int getVal() {
        return val;
    }

    public void addFrom(A otherA) {
        this.val += otherA.val;
        if (otherA.val > 0)
            otherA.val = 0;
        else
            otherA = Math.abs(otherA.val);
    }
}

Should I be using getter methods instead to use otherA’s val variable? Is it better style to do so?

Edit: This is a very simplified version of a class that takes much too long to read. But assume that there IS lazy initialization going on, that there are other methods that access this class, etc. I have updated the example method so that this may be more clear, but I hope it is clear that my question involves accessing the other object’s variables, and want to know if it is faux pas to use a direct variable access for something that is not “this”.

Answer 1

No, absolutely not.

You should use the variable directly when you’re inside the class’ members, and use getters in every other situation (when you would get an error because val is private anyway).