I've been reading and learning about OO design &
analysis for the past few months and I've just
recently started applying what I've learned in my
Flash projects ?

Learning a new language (like AS3) is no biggie but
learning how to code differently (from procedural to
OOP) is the real challenge for me !

So here's my first OOP question :

When using implicit setter methods (using the set
modifier), is it considered a good or bad practice to
validate the value passed to the implicit setter
method ?

For exemple, let's say I'm building a Flash Video
Player component and I decide that, amongst others, it
must have a volume component parameter which is a
Number.

In the implicit setter method for the volume, should I
validate the value that is passed to this method and
make sure it isn't null or undefined, it isn't NaN and
that it isn't lower than 0 or higher than 100 ?

Which of the following options is best :

1) Do not validate the value and let the user of my
component set the volume to undesired values like
null, undefined, NaN, -20, 973, etc. Here, the
assignment will work as expected whatever the value is
(unless it's of another datatype) but the component
might fail at runtime since a volume obviously can
never be NaN or null for exemple.

2) Validate the value and, if it is null, undefined or
NaN, do nothing. If it is lower than 0, set it to 0.
If it is higher than 100, set it to 100 ? Here, the
assignment might not work as expected if the valus is
undesired (like null or NaN for exemple) so this will
prevent the component from failing at runtime but the
user won't know that his assignment wasn't succesfull.

3) Validate the value and it it's an undesired value,
throw an error ? Here, the component prevents the user
from assigning and undesired value like NaN or
undefined and the user is alerted of the failure at
runtime provided that he used a try catch statement.

What do you guys think ?

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