Generic static fields initialization

Question

I\'m just getting curious about the following code :

public static class Container
{
    public static readonly T[] EmptyArray = new T[0];
}
         


        

Answer 1

The guarantee is that the static field is initialized before you access it. (And also, if there is also a static constructor, then all static fields will be initialized before the static constructor is run.)

For generic classes, static initialization works on a per-type basis, so Container acts as if it is a completely different class to Container. This is actually true for all static parts of a generic class - each type gets its own 'copy'.

An example will show this last point more clearly:

static class Foo
{
    static int count = 0;
    public static int Increment()
    {
        return ++count;
    }
}

public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        Console.WriteLine(Foo.Increment());
        Console.WriteLine(Foo.Increment());
        Console.WriteLine(Foo.Increment());
    }
}

Output:

1
2
1