Question

If you make an inherited class in C# (VS2005) do you need to explicitly call the constructor of the higher class, or will it be called automatically?

Answer 1

The default (parameterless) constructor will automatically be invoked if not supplied.

In other words, these are equivalent:

public Foo() : base() {}

and

public Foo() {}

assuming that Foo’s base has a parameterless constructor.

On the other hand, if the base only has a constructor with parameters like this:

protected MyBase(IBar bar) {}

then

public Foo() {}

will not compile. In this case you must explicitly call the base with the appropriate parameter – e.g.

public Foo(IBar bar) : base(bar) {}