What do you call a class not intended to be instantiated

[Steven D'Aprano]

I have a class which is not intended to be instantiated. Instead of using 
the class to creating an instance and then operate on it, I use the class 
directly, with classmethods. Essentially, the class is used as a function 
that keeps state from one call to the next.

The problem is that I don't know what to call such a thing! "Abstract 
class" isn't right, because that implies that you should subclass the 
class and then instantiate the subclasses.

What do you call such a class?



-- 
Steven