Syntactic Sugar for Virtual Constructors?

[Christopher Wright]

Janice Caron wrote:
> On 29/02/2008, Christopher Wright <dhasenan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>  class Derived : AbstractBaseClass
>>  {
>>     static this ()
>>     {
>>        builders["whatever"] = { return new Derived1(); };
>>     }
>>  }
> 
> Again, that would require the factory function to have compile-time
> knowledge of derived classes, which is precisely the thing to avoid.

You could try reading the code you're commenting on :P though there was 
a typo, I admit.

It was the derived class adding a delegate to a static array in the base 
class. The base class doesn't, technically speaking, know anything about 
any derived classes, and you don't get any of that circular dependency 
madness.