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Much finer control of access rights can be defined using mutators and accessors. For example, a parameter may be made read-only simply by defining an accessor but not a mutator. The visibility of the two methods may be different; it is often useful for the accessor to be public while the mutator remains protected, package-private or internal.
Accessor methods are used to read the data values of an object. Mutator methods are used to modify the data of an object. Manager methods are used to initialize and destroy objects of a class, e.g. constructors and destructors. These methods provide an abstraction layer that facilitates encapsulation and modularity.
Sometimes these accessor methods are called getX and setX (where X is the field's name), which are also known as mutator methods. Usually the accessor methods have public visibility while the field being encapsulated is given private visibility - this allows a programmer to restrict what actions another user of the code can perform. [1]
If the variable's name and owner were declared as public, the accessor and mutator methods would not be needed. In Java 14, record classes were added to fight with this issue. [4] [5] [6] To reduce the amount of boilerplate, many frameworks have been developed, e.g. Lombok for Java. [7]
In object-oriented (OO) and functional programming, an immutable object (unchangeable [1] object) is an object whose state cannot be modified after it is created. [2] This is in contrast to a mutable object (changeable object), which can be modified after it is created. [3]
Under the definition that encapsulation "can be used to hide data members and member functions", the internal representation of an object is generally hidden outside of the object's definition. Typically, only the object's own methods can directly inspect or manipulate its fields.
3 Getters, Setters and Accessors. 1 comment. 4 Name Change. 2 comments. 5 Remove all mention of the unsourced "procedural mutator" 1 comment. Toggle the table of ...
C++ generally prohibits forward references, but they are allowed in the special case of class members. Since the member function accessor cannot be compiled until the compiler knows the type of the member variable myValue, it is the compiler's responsibility to remember the definition of accessor until it sees myValue's declaration.