Why a static contructor in C# are not overloaded?

Upamanyu Roy Choudhury

Dear All,

We all know static condtructors in C# are used to initialize the static data members within a class.

But it cannot be overloaded.

My question is that why this feature is not supported?

My understanding::

Is it just because that we cannot associate an object with the static constructor like the way we do it in case of non static ones by explicitly calling them while crating an instance of the class. See the following

ClassEmployee objClassEmployee = new objClassEmployee("Emp001","Upamanyu",30000); // explicitly calling the overloaded contrcutor

But we cannot do like that

StaticCons();
StaticCons(("Emp001","Upamanyu",30000); // we do not call static construtors, it gets called before the first instance of the class gets referenced.

So the overloaded feature is off in case of static ones???

Please provide your views on it.

Many Thanks,
Upamanyu

6 Replies

Know the answer? Post it — somebody with the same question will find it here.

Vulpes13y ago
Most of my knowledge of the internal workings of the CLR comes from this book by Jeffrey Richter, now in its fourth edition:

http://www.amazon.com/CLR-via-Microsoft-Developer-Reference/sim/0735667454/2?o=18&po=9

Static constructors certainly have their problems such as deciding which one is called first when they include code which calls members of another class.

It's also not a good idea to put too much code into them as this can create a noticeable delay when accessing a member of the containing class for the first time.
Upamanyu Roy Choudhury13y ago
I have read somewhere if we call static constructors in a situation where they should not be called can create performance overhead
Upamanyu Roy Choudhury13y ago
Hi Dear,

I can get your point but where can we find what are going on behind the scene.

It is true that everything we cannot know by doing RND but atleast I am trying to get some in depth knowledge about the internals.
Vulpes13y ago
Well, I don't know anything for certain as the C# language designers don't usually announce publicly what guided them to design particular features in a particular way. Also, 'class constructors' (.cctors in MSIL) apply to .NET as a whole, not just to C#.

However, it seems to me that having static constructors executed automatically, once and once only, by the runtime before any other static member or instance constructor of the class is invoked has the following benefits for the programmer:

1. You don't have to remember to do this yourself.

2. You don't have to worry what might happen if you accidentally call the static constructor twice.

Also, there is no particular drawback since if you want to do additional initialization which requires parameters to be passed you can use an 'ordinary' static method for this purpose.
Upamanyu Roy Choudhury13y ago
This is very true but why MS has not given this functionality to call a static method explicitly? Why cannot we call a static constructor using a class name with or without arguments?

We can call a static method like this

ClassName.StaticMethod

Then why not constructors?? Why MS has not given this fecility???
Vulpes13y ago
Yes, it's because the static constructor is always called by the system - never directly by the programmer.

Consequently, it makes no sense for it to take any parameters as the system would have no way of knowing what arguments to pass for those parameters.

As it can't take any parameters, it follows that it can't be overloaded either.