Class design: accessing "private" members

[Jerome Quelin]

"Alex Martelli" <alex at magenta.com> wrote:
>By calling the accessors, rather than accessing the data
>directly, you ensure that if somebody overrides the
>accessor functions in a derived class you'll be calling
>the derived-class versions of those functions.  If that is
>what you want (one direction along which you want to let
>inheritors of your class extend or tweak behaviour), then
>it's probably worth the overhead you mention.
The class isn't to be derived any further. It's a class that I use in an
application, and that may be imported in some other applications, but not to be
inherited.

Then, is it better/cleaner to access private members with accessors or not?
Is it a matter of style? Or are there hidden caveheats using (or not using)
accessors? It _seems_ cleaner to use accessors, but man, it's quite awkward.

Jerome
--
jerome.quelin at insalien.org