Java™ How to Program, Seventh Edition

8.7. Notes on Set and Get Methods

As you know, a class’s private fields can be manipulated only by methods of that class. A typical manipulation might be the adjustment of a customer’s bank balance (e.g., a private instance variable of a class BankAccount) by a method computeInterest. Classes often provide public methods to allow clients of the class to set (i.e., assign values to) or get (i.e., obtain the values of) private instance variables.

As a naming example, a method that sets instance variable interestRate would typically be named setInterestRate and a method that gets the interestRate would typically be called getInterestRate. Set methods are also commonly called mutator methods, because they typically change a value. Get methods are ...