Question

I have been using Singleton classes and static method for a while and always used to wonder how nice it would have been to have a seperate type which is a static type and cannot be instantiated but have only static methods!

It will be easy for readability and also to maintain.

for Ex

public UtilType MyUtility
{
  public void Calculate(int x,int y)
  {
    return x+y;
  }
}

Here MyUtility should not be allowed to be instantiated only its methods can be accessed in static way.

Answer 1

Why C# and java does not support util type ?

To answer your question, we cannot read the minds of the designers of C# and Java, so we can only infer their reasons for not supporting ‘utility’ classes. But the reasons probably include:

• Utility classes are not object oriented, and are infrequently used in well designed OO application.

• They are semantically redundant. You can code a normal class so that it cannot be instantiated, which is the only essentially different thing about a utility class.

• The coding effort to turn a regular class into a “utility” class is trivial. In Java for example it is one line of code; i.e. a private no-arg constructor.

Since utility classes are semantically redundant, infrequently used, and trivial to code in Java / C# as they are currently specified, there is no real case to add syntactic sugar to the language to support them.

And even if it were a good idea, the down-sides of making such a change would include:

• The considerable cost of revising language specifications, modifying compilers and associated tools, revising / extending tutorials and text books, and so on.

• The impact on the existing Java / C# customer application codebase of adding a new keyword.

• The extra increment of difficulty in learning the language caused by adding a new class variant.