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Often a setter is accompanied by a getter, which returns the value of the private member variable. They are also known collectively as accessors . The mutator method is most often used in object-oriented programming , in keeping with the principle of encapsulation .
A property, in some object-oriented programming languages, is a special sort of class member, intermediate in functionality between a field (or data member) and a method.The syntax for reading and writing of properties is like for fields, but property reads and writes are (usually) translated to 'getter' and 'setter' method calls.
The C# language supports class properties, which provide a means to define get and set operations (getters and setters) for a member variable. The syntax to access or modify the property is the same as accessing any other class member variable, but the actual implementation for doing so can be defined as either a simple read/write access or as ...
In languages that support access specifiers, the interface of a class is considered to be the set of public members of the class, including both methods and attributes (via implicit getter and setter methods); any private members or internal data structures are not intended to be depended on by external code and thus are not part of the interface.
In garbage-collected languages, such as Java, [4]: 26, 29 C#, [5]: 208–209 and Python, destructors are known as finalizers. They have a similar purpose and function to destructors, but because of the differences between languages that utilize garbage-collection and languages with manual memory management, the sequence in which they are called ...
In contrast, properties, in C# terminology, are members of a class which syntactically are used like instance (or class) variables, but are implemented as a pair of getter/setter functions. (In the absence of a setter, properties are read-only.)
The properties can be simple access-er functions with a backing field, or implement arbitrary getter and setter functions. A property is read-only if there's no setter. Like with fields, there can be class and instance properties. The underlying methods can be virtual or abstract like any other method. [82]
The features of encapsulation are supported using classes in most object-oriented languages, although other alternatives also exist. Encapsulation may also refer to containing a repetitive or complex process in a single unit to be invoked. Object-oriented programming facilitate this at both the method and class levels.