Question

Sorry if the question sounds confusing. What I mean is that if I have a class that has a method that does a bunch of calculations and then returns a value, I can either make that method public (which gives my other classes access), or I can make it private and make a public get method.

Something like this:

public publicmethod{
    return privatemethod();
}
private privatemethod{
    //do stuff
    return value;
}

Is this a futile exercise or does it provide additional program security?

Answer 1

Well, there is no additional security here. However, such a usage can sometimes make sense.

For example, the private and public method may have different semantics.

// base class
public virtual BuyFood()
{
    BuyPizza();
    BuyCoke();
}
private void BuyPizza()
{
    // ...
}

// derived class
public override void BuyFood()
{
    BuyChopSuey();
}
private void BuyChopSuey()
{
    // ...
}

So your implementation is just calling to a private method — but what is important, you expose the semantics: your BuyFood operation is just BuyChopSuey(). Your code says: “in this class, buying food is just buying chop suey” in a clear way. You are able to add BuyTsingtaoBeer() into BuyFood() any time without changing the semantics of the both methods.