what are the main differences between a Java/C# static class?

Question

In C# a static class is a class that, in addition to not supporting inheritance, can have any kind of type member a "normal" class can have except instance members.

Not so sure how static classes work in java, but based on the limited amount of java code I have seen, it's clear to me that they don't work quite the same way.

Can someone please enumerate the differences?

Answer 1

Static classes in Java are one of three kinds of nested classes provided by the language (the other two being non-static nested classes and function-scoped classes).

Static classes of Java behave the same way that nested classes of C#: they have access to static members of the enclosing class, but cannot access instance members without an additional reference to the enclosing object. In contrast, non-static nested functions can access instance variables, but you need an enclosing instance in order to be instantiated.