Question

I am trying to inherit a non-static class by a static class.

public class foo { }  public static class bar : foo { } 

And I get:

Static class cannot derive from type. Static classes must derive from object.

How can I derive it from object?

The code is in C#.

Answer 1

There’s no value in deriving static classes. The reasons to use inheritance are:

• Polymorphism
• Code reuse

You can’t get polymorphism with static classes, obviously, because there is no instance to dynamically dispatch on (in other words, it’s not like you can pass a Bar to a function expecting a Foo, since you don’t have a Bar).

Code reuse is easily solved using composition: give Bar a static instance of Foo.