使用getter或direct名称在自己的类中获取私有变量？

Question

whats the more prefered way to get private variables within the same Class.

for instance we have this code:

public Class TestClass
{
    private String name;

    public String getName()
    {
        return name;
    }
    public void setName(String name)
    {
        this.name = name;
    }

...

    public String someMethod()
    {
        return getInfo(name);
        or
        return getInfo(getName());
    }
}

...

so whats the prefered way, to get the private variable within the same class with its name or with its getter ?

Update: The getter will always just return name.

Answer 1

Well, this I think is a preference/situation related question. If you call directly the field you will get a better time because you don't do an additional method call which are very fast anyway, and maybe be a little more concise. But if you use a getter you can add another layer of abstraction, and do some other stuff in there, like returning another value instead of the default is the field is not set, something like:

int getAge() {
   return (age < 18) ? 18 : age;
}

Also this will help in the case of objects to avoid to return null, like:

Stuff getStuff() {
    if(stuff == null) {
        return Stuff.NULL_OBJECT;
    }
}

Please beware that Stuff is my class and the NULL_OBJECT field is a Null object pattern implementation, and my example doesn't have any synchronization.

This being said, I always use the direct field access approach if the situation doesn't require something extravagant.

Answer 2

Preference will depend on context. In your case above where the getter simply returns the variable, many developers will tend to return the variable directly. However, if your getter is more complicated or believe it might change in the future, then the use of the getter might be preferred. It all depends on what name represents, what getName() returns and what getInfo(...) expects.