In OOP coding, there is a long standing naming convention to name accessor/mutator methods getThing and setThing. These directly manipulate the properties, which are often private.Should these naming conventions be 'reserved' solely for manipulating the object properties? or can they be used in other methods - getFileContents ? I think readFileContents is much clearer as it implies the objects property in this case isn't being accessed, but rather a files contents are being read. However, it is a little ambiguous in that it doesn't imply the results are being returned like getFileContents would.
get set method naming conventions
object oriented;conventions;setters
Naming conventions are simply suggestions. There are no set rules for anything. The only guideline you need to follow is to name your function according to what it does. If your function readFileContents both reads and returns parts of the file, consider splitting it up into two functions, readFileContents and getFileContents, for example. readFileContents can peruse the file for interesting data and then send it to getFileContents when it wishes to return something. This will separate the concerns so that each function is only doing one thing. 