Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!necntc!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ISC.COM (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: access functions
Message-ID: <3584@haddock.ISC.COM>
Date: 22 Apr 88 16:43:11 GMT
References: <8063@apple.Apple.Com> <6590039@hplsla.HP.COM> <11152@mimsy.UUCP> <5547@columbia.edu>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 13

In article <5547@columbia.edu> fox@convent.columbia.edu (David Fox) writes:
>There is really no need for the parentheses after a function that
>takes no arguments.  [If the parens were supplied by the compiler,]
>then you could start with a public member and later change it to an
>access function without hosing your clients.

Only if the clients have been treating the variable as if it were an access
function.  `zi = z.imag' works fine, but anyone who used `z.imag = zi' would
be hosed.  (Using an lfunction (i.e. having imag() return a reference) doesn't
solve it either; in the most general case you need separate access and store
functions.  In the complex-number example, the store function is usually just
the constructor.)

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint