Setters

Since age does not translate uniquely into a date-of-birth, we probably wouldn't make a corresponding setter for age. But we might make one for date-of-birth, to provide for correction of that information.

A possible implementation of setDOB:

 

class Person

{

String name;

Date dateOfBirth;

 ....

void setDOB(Date newDateOfBirth)	// sets date-of-birth

  {

  dateOfBirth = newDateOfBirth;

  }

}

 

p.setDateOfBirth(new Date(80, 11, 30));

 

The use of a setter is preferable to just changing the dateOfBirth outright. For example, we may wish to install a log field which logs all changes to the record. Calling setDOB would add an entry to this log.