Question

Duplicate

Should C# methods that can be static be static?

---

Please forgive me if this question seems elementary – I’m looking over some source code that otherwise looks pretty good, but it’s raised some questions…

If a given class has no member data – i.e. it doesn’t maintain any sort of state, are there any benefits in not marking that class as a static class with static methods?

Are there any benefits in not marking methods which don’t maintain state as static?

Thanks!

EDIT: Since someone brought it up, the code I’m looking at is written in c#.

Answer 1

Yes. I can think of some reasons:

1. Ease of mocking and unit testing
2. Ease of adding state
3. You could pass it around (as an interface or something)