How to call base.base.method()?

Question

Just want to add this here, since people still return to this question even after many time. Of course it's bad practice, but it's still possible (in principle) to do what author wants with:

class SpecialDerived : Derived
{
    public override void Say()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Called from Special Derived.");
        var ptr = typeof(Base).GetMethod("Say").MethodHandle.GetFunctionPointer();            
        var baseSay = (Action)Activator.CreateInstance(typeof(Action), this, ptr);
        baseSay();            
    }
}

This is a bad programming practice, and not allowed in C#. It's a bad programming practice because

• The details of the grandbase are implementation details of the base; you shouldn't be relying on them. The base class is providing an abstraction overtop of the grandbase; you should be using that abstraction, not building a bypass to avoid it.

• To illustrate a specific example of the previous point: if allowed, this pattern would be yet another way of making code susceptible to brittle-base-class failures. Suppose C derives from B which derives from A. Code in C uses base.base to call a method of A. Then the author of B realizes that they have put too much gear in class B, and a better approach is to make intermediate class B2 that derives from A, and B derives from B2. After that change, code in C is calling a method in B2, not in A, because C's author made an assumption that the implementation details of B, namely, that its direct base class is A, would never change. Many design decisions in C# are to mitigate the likelihood of various kinds of brittle base failures; the decision to make base.base illegal entirely prevents this particular flavour of that failure pattern.

• You derived from your base because you like what it does and want to reuse and extend it. If you don't like what it does and want to work around it rather than work with it, then why did you derive from it in the first place? Derive from the grandbase yourself if that's the functionality you want to use and extend.

• The base might require certain invariants for security or semantic consistency purposes that are maintained by the details of how the base uses the methods of the grandbase. Allowing a derived class of the base to skip the code that maintains those invariants could put the base into an inconsistent, corrupted state.

You can't from C#. From IL, this is actually supported. You can do a non-virt call to any of your parent classes... but please don't. :)

The answer (which I know is not what you're looking for) is:

class SpecialDerived : Base
{
    public override void Say()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Called from Special Derived.");
        base.Say();
    }
}

The truth is, you only have direct interaction with the class you inherit from. Think of that class as a layer - providing as much or as little of it or its parent's functionality as it desires to its derived classes.

EDIT:

Your edit works, but I think I would use something like this:

class Derived : Base
{
    protected bool _useBaseSay = false;

    public override void Say()
    {
        if(this._useBaseSay)
            base.Say();
        else
            Console.WriteLine("Called from Derived");
    }
}

Of course, in a real implementation, you might do something more like this for extensibility and maintainability:

class Derived : Base
{
    protected enum Mode
    {
        Standard,
        BaseFunctionality,
        Verbose
        //etc
    }

    protected Mode Mode
    {
        get; set;
    }

    public override void Say()
    {
        if(this.Mode == Mode.BaseFunctionality)
            base.Say();
        else
            Console.WriteLine("Called from Derived");
    }
}

Then, derived classes can control their parents' state appropriately.