For me, inheritance is often a headache. In particular, in what order is everything initialized? Consider this short C# program. It creates an instance of Dog, which derives from Animal. Both Dog and Animal have an instance constructor, a class initializer (aka a static constructor), an instance variable, and a static variable.
using System;
namespace CtorOrder
{
class Animal
{
public int instanceAnimal = Program.Print("Animal.instanceAnimal");
public static int staticAnimal = Program.Print("Animal.staticAnimal");
public Animal()
{
Console.WriteLine("Animal constructor");
}
static Animal()
{
Console.WriteLine("Animal class constructor");
}
}
class Dog : Animal
{
public int instanceDog = Program.Print("Dog.instanceDog");
public static int staticDog = Program.Print("Dog.staticDog");
public Dog()
{
Console.WriteLine("Dog constructor");
}
static Dog()
{
Console.WriteLine("Dog class constructor");
}
}
class Program
{
public static int Print(string s)
{
Console.WriteLine(s);
return 0;
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Dog d = new Dog();
Console.WriteLine("\nPress enter to continue");
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
}
There are eight activities here:
- Dog instance constructor
- Dog class constructor
- Dog instance variable
- Dog static variable
- Animal instance constructor
- Animal class constructor
- Animal instance variable
- Animal static variable
The question is: ‘In what order are the eight activities run?’ Try working it out. Anyway, the answer is:
- Dog static variable
- Dog class constructor
- Dog instance variable
- Animal static variable
- Animal class constructor
- Animal instance variable
- Animal instance constructor
- Dog instance constructor
There are two things I find surprising about this:
- Why do static constructors run from most derived class to least derived class, i.e. Dog then Animal?
- Why do instance variables get initialized before calling the parent’s instance constructor?
The answer to question 1 is that Dog’s class initializer has to be run since we are running Dog’s instance constructor, but execution of any type's class initializer method will not trigger automatic execution of any class initializer methods defined by its base type. Indeed, why should it?
The answer to question 2 is complicated. Constructing instance fields in the most derived class first is the only way to ensure that readonly fields are initialized and then not changed. Check out Eric Lippert’s blog for a decent explanation: http://blogs.msdn.com/ericlippert/archive/2008/02/15/why-do-initializers-run-in-the-opposite-order-as-constructors-part-one.aspx