C# in Depth

Chapter 10. Extension methods

This chapter covers

• Writing extension methods

• Calling extension methods

• Method chaining

• Extension methods in .NET 3.5

• Other uses for extension methods

I’m not a fan of inheritance. Or rather, I’m not a fan of a number of places where inheritance has been used in code that I’ve maintained, or class libraries I’ve worked with. As with so many things, it’s powerful when used properly, but it’s got a design overhead to it that is often overlooked and can become painful over time. It’s sometimes used as a way of adding extra behavior and functionality to a class, even when no real information is being added about the object—where nothing is being specialized.

Sometimes that’s appropriate—if objects of the new type should carry ...