Accessor Methods in Java

Question

So I have a question on \"setter\" and \"getter\" methods and how useful they are or aren\'t.

Let\'s say I just write a very basic program like the following:

<

Answer 1

If your code never changes then you're right - there is no difference.

However, code changes a lot. What happens if you need to keep track of who has modified their name?

You would need to have a boolean in the Account class that would change to true whenever the name field has changed.

So now you have to go through every source file and put a

myAccount.nameChanged = true' under each

myAccount.name = whatever;

So you start having code duplication and the possibility for bugs increases. What happens if I missed a name change?

The best way to counteract this is to have member variables classified as private.

Your setName code would look something like this:

public void setName(String newName)
{
    name = newName;
    nameChanged = true;
}

And you don't have to worry about bugs!