🚀 go-pugleaf

On 29 Mar 1996 09:07:43 PST, davidb@datalytics.com (David Bradley)
wrote:

>On the surface this sounds good.  The obvious problem is the issue of
>access.  You may want the a private set and public get.

>Another problem is you are unable to perform any validation within the
>set function.

The property class was designed to caputure the "get/set" pattern for
simple value types that need no validation.  In his article, the
author explains that the idea originated with Delphi properties.  It
posted this class in response to a discussion regarding adding
extensions to C++ to allow read/write access to member variables.
Basically, I wanted to point out that using a simple template class
you could accomplish the same thing the proposed extensions would
accomplish.  If you only wanted a public get, you could take the
property template and create a new version called read_only_property
in which the set member not provided.  I think that most of us would
agree that public data members are a bad thing and that acessing them
through function calls allows us to later change how the data members
are represented with out affecting client code.

>Lastly the naming of the data member/accessors breaks most common
>styles.  Usually the member functions are distingiushed in some manner
>from the data members.

If you mean not explicitly naming the get/set functions with get/set
tacked on the beginning of the name then yes, I agree that the
property template breaks with common style.  Personally, I never use
get/set prefixes in any of the code that I write.  When I do have
members that perform get/set operations I overload member function
acessors with names like those used by the property class.  Client
code should never rely on any internal class implementation details;
only interfaces to the services provided by the class.


Jason
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