Julio M. Merino Vidal wrote:
Hello,
[ I'm not sure this really belongs to this list (as opposed to some C+ + generic list), but as it is related to some comments I received a while ago from this list, I'm posting it here. ]
Back when I presented Boost.Process 0.1 past year, I used getters for all class members that had to be exposed to the library user.
However, some reviewers commented that it was "ugly" to provide getters that just returned a member's value. I tried to change most of those instances to constant members that could be queried directly, but I still have doubts whether that was the correct way to go.
Here are my reasons supporting getters: snip...
Getters are far superior to const members for all the reasons you cited, plus this one: often data does not reside as a member of an object but must be created at run-time when requested. This last is a perfectly logical reason for getters, and for the 'property' notion in general.