Property (programming)

A property, in some object-oriented programming languages, is a special sort of class member, intermediate in functionality between a field (or data member) and a method. The syntax for reading and writing of properties is like for fields, but property reads and writes are (usually) translated to 'getter' and 'setter' method calls. The field-like syntax is easier to read and write than lots of method calls, yet the interposition of method calls "under the hood" allows for data validation, active updating (e.g., of GUI elements), or implementation of what may be called "read-only fields".

See an instructive example for C# language below.

Programming languages that support properties include ActionScript 3, C#, D, Delphi/Free Pascal, eC, F#, Kotlin, JavaScript, Objective-C 2.0, Python, Scala, Swift, Lua, and Visual Basic. Some object-oriented languages, such as Java and C++, don't support properties, and require the programmer to define a pair of accessor and mutator methods instead. Oberon-2 provides an alternative mechanism using object variable visibility flags. Other languages designed for the Java Virtual Machine, such as Groovy, do natively support properties. While C++ doesn't have first class properties, they can be emulated due to operator overloading. Also note that some C++ compilers support first class properties (the Microsoft C++ compiler as an example).

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