Question

I have created a public static class utils.cs I want to use it in other classes without prefixing method with utils, what’s the syntax to do this ?

Answer 1

What Jon Skeet is not telling you is that you can have global static members in c#. Your utility class can indeed become a reality in c#.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has determined that the very process of constructing such members as above mere “normal” development, and requires that you forge them from raw intermediate language. Such a powerful pattern is above common syntax highlighting and friendly icons).

Here is the requisite sequence of utf-8 characters (guard it carefully):

.assembly globalmethods {}

.method static public void MyUtilMethod() il managed 
{
  ldstr "Behold, a global method!"
  call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(class System.String) 
  ret
}

(You could compile this example by invoking ilasm.exe from the SDK command prompt, remembering to use the /dll switch)

---

ilasm.exe output:

Microsoft (R) .NET Framework IL Assembler. Version 2.0.50727.4016
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Assembling ‘globalmethods.msil’ to DLL –> ‘globalmethods.dll’
Source file is ANSI

global.msil(7) : warning — Reference to undeclared extern assembly ‘mscorlib’.
Attempting autodetect

Assembled global method MyUtilMethod

Creating PE file

Emitting classes:

Emitting fields and methods:
Global Methods: 1;

Emitting events and properties:
Global
Writing PE file
Operation completed successfully

---

Once you have compiled your newly created assembly (as “globalmethods.dll” for example), it’s just a matter of adding a reference in Visual Studio. When that is complete, you better be sitting down, because it will be time to write some real code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Reflection;

namespace TestGlobalMethod
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {

            "MyUtilMethod".Call();

            Console.ReadKey();

        }

    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Reduces the amount of code for global call
    /// </summary>
    public static class GlobalExtensionMethods 
    {
        public static void Call(this string GlobalMethodName)
        {
            Assembly.Load("globalmethods")
                .GetLoadedModules()[0].GetMethod(GlobalMethodName)
                    .Invoke(null,null);

        }

    }


}

Yes, you just called a Global method in c#.

*Please don’t use this, it’s for example only 🙂 Also, you could probably write your global methods in another language that support them, such as VB.NET.