What are getter and setter methods in Ruby?

Getter and Setter methods are used to get and set the values of instance variables respectively. Without gettter methods you can not read the values of instance variables of an instance and without setter methods you can not set/update the values of instance variables of an instance.

Conside the following example to understand that how to implement the getter and setter methods:

            
              class Rectangle
                def initialize(length, width)
                  @length = length
                  @width = width
                  return @length
                end

                def length # getter method to read the value of @length
                  @length
                end

                def width # getter method to read the value of @width
                  @width
                end

                def length=(value) # setter method to update the value of @length
                  @length = value
                end

                def width=(value) # setter method to update the value of @width
                  @width = value
                end

                def area
                  @length * @width
                end

                def peremeter
                  2 * (@length + @width)
                end
              end

              @rectangle = Rectangle.new(100, 200)
              # <Rectangle:0x000000012f9e3ab0 @length=100, @width=200>

              @rectangle.length
              # 100

              @rectangle.length = 120

              @rectangle.length
              # 120
            
          

Here you need to notice one thing that the getter and setter methods must have their name same as the name of instance variables.