What is the best way to attach static methods to classes rather than to instances of a class?
- by John Gietzen
If I have a method for calculating the greatest common divisor of two integers as:
public static int GCD(int a, int b)
{
return b == 0 ? a : GCD(b, a % b);
}
What would be the best way to attach that to the System.Math class?
Here are the three ways I have come up with:
public static int GCD(this int a, int b)
{
return b == 0 ? a : b.GCD(a % b);
}
// Lame...
var gcd = a.GCD(b);
and:
public static class RationalMath
{
public static int GCD(int a, int b)
{
return b == 0 ? a : GCD(b, a % b);
}
}
// Lame...
var gcd = RationalMath.GCD(a, b);
and:
public static int GCD(this Type math, int a, int b)
{
return b == 0 ? a : typeof(Math).GCD(b, a % b);
}
// Neat?
var gcd = typeof(Math).GCD(a, b);
The desired syntax is Math.GCD since that is the standard for all mathematical functions.
Any suggestions? What should I do to get the desired syntax?
