What is the purpose of accessors?

Question

Can somebody help me understand the get & set?
Why are they needed? I can just make a public variable.

Answer 1

They are called Accessors

The accessor of a property contains the executable statements associated with getting (reading or computing) or setting (writing) the property. The accessor declarations can contain a get accessor, a set accessor, or both. The body of the get accessor resembles that of a method. It must return a value of the property type.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w86s7x04.aspx

private string m_Name;   // the name field
public string Name   // the Name property
{
   get 
   {
      return m_Name; 
   }
}

The set accessor resembles a method whose return type is void. It uses an implicit parameter called value, whose type is the type of the property.

private m_Name;
public string Name {
    get {
        return m_Name;
    }
    set {
        m_Name = value;
    }
}

Then in the incarnation of C# 3, you can do this much easier through auto-properties

public string Name {get; set; } // read and write
public string Name {get; }  // read only
public string Name { get; private set; } //read and parent write

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb384054.aspx