Re: Private methods?

[Andreas Heppel]

On 2004-04-25 22:23:30 +0200 John Baxter <john@ebaxters.net> wrote:

> Why would a language have private data members but then make all methods 
> "setters" public?... does this not then make the data public? I am a bit 
> confused by this.
No, the data actually stays private. No other piece of code can access it 
_directly_. That is the key word here. On a private/protected ivar you cannot 
do something like 'myobject->data' as would be possible if data was public. As 
soon as you implement a setter method, it is your explicit wish to provide a 
method for the outside world to access this ivar, because for class internal 
use you would not need it.

The statement that all methods not declared in the interface are 'private' is 
more a matter of convention. As the compiler (and the programmer, of course) 
doesn't see those methods it will give a warning, that this method is 
_possibly_ not meant for public usage. But you will not be prevented from 
doing so.


Andreas

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