Independent getter/setter methods, or combined?

Question

While working on a project, I've been making some changes and browsing around existing framework API docs for insight.

While perusing the Kohana docs, I noticed that the getters/setters of any given class are typically combined:

public function someProperty($value = null){
    if(is_null($value){
        return $this->_someProperty;
    }
    $this->_someProperty = $value;
    return $this;
}

Rather than:

public function setSomeProperty($value){
    $this->_someProperty = $value;
    return $this;
}

public function getSomeProperty(){
    return $this->_someProperty;
}

Is there any value in doing this (the former), beyond lessening the method count of a given class? I was always under the understanding that methods (functions in general) should be more descriptive of an action. Do other experienced developers cringe, even a tiny bit, when they see this?

I was just surprised to see a popular framework use such conventions (I haven't used Kohana of course)

Answer 1

Why not do it like this?

public function someProperty($value = null)
{
    if (func_num_args() === 1) {
        $this->someProperty = $value;
        return $this;
    } else {
        return $this->someProperty;
    }
}

This would imo be the only correct way to implement a combined getter/setter