LESSON 188 OF 348 · OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING

Access Specifiers in Rust in Rust

Lesson

TL ; DR:

C++ has three access specifiers: public:, private:, and protected:. They appear as labels in the class body and apply to everything below them until the next label.

By default, members of a class are private (and members of a struct are public):

struct Dog {
    name: String,  // private by default (no pub keyword)
}
impl Dog {
    fn new(name: String) -> Dog { Dog { name } }
    fn get_name(&self) -> &str { &self.name }
}

Outside the class, rex.name is a compile error. Use rex.get_name() instead.

Full lesson:

Access specifiers in C++ work like access modifiers in Java/C#, but with different syntax — they're section labels rather than per-member modifiers.

struct BankAccount {
    balance: f64,  // private by default
}
impl BankAccount {
    fn deposit(&mut self, amount: f64) {
        if amount < 0.0 { return; }
        self.balance += amount;
    }
    fn get_balance(&self) -> f64 { self.balance }
}

If balance were public, any client could just write account.balance = -1000.0; and corrupt the state.

Your task

The Dog struct has its name field private by default. Add a fn get_name(&self) -> &str method in the impl block that returns name.

Dog's name: Rex

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Guided

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Access Specifiers in Rust in Rust

Access Modifiers in Rust