Never return a non-const pointer to a data member!This tip submitted by hussain hani on 2009-08-05 08:26:12. It has been viewed 1759 times.Rating of 3.0 with 4 votes Consider this code
class Car
{
private:
int _seats;
// etc... with constructors and stuff
public:
//NEVER DO THIS
int* getSeats() { return &_seats; }
};
If you do this, someone can modify the _seats variable without going through the setter method, which violates encapsulation and might mean that important code that should run when the _seats field is changed doesn't actually run. If you return the value as a const reference or a const pointer, you avoid this problem:
const int& getSeats() { return _seats; }
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