I’m learning some C# and Unity and came across this tutorial where I thought the creator did something strange.

If we want to get a value from another file, which is better?

Example:

This would be the file where we update the variable we want to access.

public class Player : MonoBehaviour
{
    public bool isActive;

    if (reason) {
        isActive = true;
    } else {
        isActive = false;
    }

    public bool IsActive() {
        return isActive;
    }
}

Which option would be better if we wanted to access the “isActive” variable in another file?

Accessing the variable?

bool isActive1 = player.isActive;

Or Accessing the function?

bool isActive1 = player.IsActive();

Both obviously work. I want to know which is better and for what reason.

In my head accessing the variable is cleaner and I don’t understand why using a function would be faster or more efficient.

Maybe when working with a bigger project using the function will be better.

I’m not sure.