Declare a Dictionary inside a static class

Question

How to declare a static dictionary object inside a static class? I tried

public static class ErrorCode
{
    public const IDictionary E         


        

Answer 1

The problem with your initial example was primarily due to the use of const rather than static; you can't create a non-null const reference in C#.

I believe this would also have worked:

public static class ErrorCode
{
    public static IDictionary ErrorCodeDic
        = new Dictionary()
            { {"1", "User name or password problem"} };
}

Also, as Y Low points out, adding readonly is a good idea as well, and none of the modifiers discussed here will prevent the dictionary itself from being modified.