RE: [Junit-devel] getName()

[Russell G. <rus...@ac...>]

At 08:54 AM 10/22/2001 -0700, Kent Beck wrote:
>But what does "get" mean? It seems to mean "I'm sending a message and expect
>a reply". That is obvious from context.
>
>I don't mean to re-start a war that has probably been fought 1000 times, but
>under what circumstances do you have a method with a non-void return type
>and you don't prefix its name with "get"?

well, if it has a boolean value, you often prefix it's name with "is"...

I agree with you that I don't like the 'get' prefix; however, with the 
introduction of JavaBeans in JDK 1.1, getXXX became a Java language naming 
convention. Most Java programmers now expect a getXXX method for any 
"property" of a class.  For those of us who came to Java from other 
languages it is annoying - but it is widespread enough that it probably 
should not be changed.