Getters and Setters in Kotlin: A Comprehensive Guide

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In Kotlin, getters and setters are an essential part of property management, allowing you to define custom behavior for reading and writing property values. This article delves into the intricacies of getters and setters in Kotlin, showcasing how they work, how to use them, and the advantages they bring to your Kotlin applications.

What Are Getters and Setters?

In Kotlin, a property is a combination of a field (data) and two accessor functions: a getter and a setter. The getter function retrieves the property value, and the setter function updates it. By default, Kotlin provides automatic getter and setter methods, but you can customize them to implement specific behavior.

Understanding Default Getters and Setters

Kotlin simplifies property access by automatically generating getters and setters for you. Consider the following example:

class Person {
    var name: String = "John Doe"
    var age: Int = 25
}

fun main() {
    val person = Person()
    println(person.name) // Calls the default getter
    person.age = 30      // Calls the default setter
    println(person.age)
}