**Encapsulation** is one of the fundamental concepts of the Object-oriented programming paradigm. It is the process of wrapping the data stored in a private member variable inside its **getter** and **setter** methods. The getter function is used to retrieve the variable value and the setter function is used to set the variable value. 

> Remember: You can directly access public member variables, but private member variables are not accessible. Therefore, we need getter functions.

# Code

In the code below, we have an `Item` class with the private member variable `price`. Since you cannot directly access this variable outside this class, the public member function i.e., `getPrice()` is used.

> Try changing line $23$ to `bag.price` instead of `bag.getPrice()`. You will see ​an error.

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

class Item {
  private:
    // Private member variable
    int price;

  public:
    // constructor
    Item(int p) {
      price = p;
    }

    // getter function
    int getPrice() {
      return price;
    }
};

int main() {
  Item bag(20);
  cout << "$" << bag.getPrice();
  return 0;
}

What are getter functions in C++?

Code