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Kotlin Quick Start Guide

You're reading from   Kotlin Quick Start Guide Core features to get you ready for developing applications

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Product type Paperback
Published in Aug 2018
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781789344189
Length 178 pages
Edition 1st Edition
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Marko Devcic Marko Devcic
Author Profile Icon Marko Devcic
Marko Devcic
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Properties

A Kotlin class doesn't have setter or getter methods, yet it doesn't break encapsulation by exposing private fields. The reason is that Kotlin has properties. C# is one of the languages Kotlin drew inspiration from, and the concept of properties is one of the things it took from C#. You can think of properties as fields and methods, all in one place. To the outside users of a property, the syntax looks like they are accessing a public field of a class. Internally in your class, behind a property, you can have get and set accessors or methods and a private backing field. The get and set methods then control how your private field is accessed, thus not breaking encapsulation.

Specifying get and set, as in our case, is optional. If you omit them, then it is implied that the property is both read and write. The compiler generates a private backing field for you...

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