accessor - hpgDesigns/hpgdesigns-dev.io GitHub Wiki

In programming in general, an accessor is a function designed exclusively to return a variable it represents. While seeming pointless, accessors are a key part of many programs, including ENIGMA.

In C++, accessors are most often used to return the values of private members. This is often done to standardize and unify classes which are required to offer access to a certain attribute, but are not required to use a specific implementation. For example, string offers a length() accessor. In some implementations, this function simply returns this->size. In the GNU implementation, it returns ((size_t*)data)[-2]. In a really shitty implementation, it may return strlen(data).

In ENIGMA, accessors are used mostly for cross-scope access routines; namely, dot access. Accessors are generated and called automatically by the ENIGMA compiler in order to get more complicated games to run.