Advantages to Using Private Static Methods

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When creating a class that has internal private methods, usually to reduce code duplication, that don’t require the use of any instance fields, are there performance or memory advantages to declaring the method as static?

Example:

foreach (XmlElement element in xmlDoc.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("sample"))
{
    string first = GetInnerXml(element, ".//first");
    string second = GetInnerXml(element, ".//second");
    string third = GetInnerXml(element, ".//third");
}

…

private static string GetInnerXml(XmlElement element, string nodeName)
{
    return GetInnerXml(element, nodeName, null);
}

private static string GetInnerXml(XmlElement element, string nodeName, string defaultValue)
{
    XmlNode node = element.SelectSingleNode(nodeName);
    return node == null ? defaultValue : node.InnerXml;
}

Is there any advantage to declaring the GetInnerXml() methods as static? No opinion responses please, I have an opinion.

8 Answers
8

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