Reference in place of getters?

Question

in C++ is it a bad practice to use reference in place of getters?

for example:

class X
{
    int mP;
 public:
    const int& P;
    X():P(mP){}
}; 
<         


        

Answer 1

None of this is good:

class X { public: int x; };
class X {
    private: int m_x;
    public: const int& get() const { return m_x; }
    public: void set(const int& other)  { m_x = other; } 
};
class X {
    private: int m_x;
    public: const int& x() const { return m_x; }
    public: void x(const int& other)  { m_x = other; } 
};
class X {
    private: int m_x;
    public: const int& x() const { return m_x; }
    public: int& x()  { return m_x; }
};

Pick one, it's a design decision.

Having 'const int& x' to publish the private member will work:

class X {
    private: int m_x;
    public: const int& x;
    public: X() : m_x(0), x(m_x) {}
    // Take care for copy and assignment
};

The cost is a larger memory footprint.