A method defined within a class can either be an Accessor or a Mutator method.

An Accessor method returns the information about the object, but do not change the state or the object.

A Mutator method, also called an Update method, can change the state of the object.

Consider the following example:

In [10]: a = [1,2,3,4,5]

In [11]: a.count(1)
Out[11]: 1

In [12]: a.index(2)
Out[12]: 1

In [13]: a
Out[13]: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

In [14]: a.append(6)

In [15]: a
Out[15]: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

The methods a.count() and a.index() are both Accessor methods since it doesn’t alter the object a in any sense, but only pulls the relevant information.

But a.append() is a mutator method, since it effectively changes the object (list a) to a new one.

In short, knowing the behavior of a method is helpful to understand how it alters the objects it acts upon.