Casting Call

Type safety only gets you so far; eventually you have to cast. There are three features in the C# language which address typing: the unary cast operator and the binary "as" and "is" operators. I see people misuse these operators all the time, so here for your records are the official Best Ways to use each.

If you want to check the type of an object and do not care about using the object as that type, use the "is" operator. For example:

if (thing is MyType) {
    // do something which doesn't involve thing
}

If you want to check the type of an object and then use that object as that type, use the "as" operator and the check for null. For example:

var my_type_thing = thing as MyType;
if (my_type_thing != null) {
    // do something with my_type_thing
}

This only works for reference types since value types cannot be null. For value types, use the "is" and cast operators. For example:

if (thing is MyValueType) {
    var my_value_type_thing = (MyValueType)thing;
    // do something with my_value_type_thing
}

If you know for a fact that an object is some type, use the cast operator. For example:

var my_type_thing = (MyType)thing;
// do something with my_type_thing

These patterns minimize the operations performed by the runtime. This wisdom comes by way Marek who educated me on this a while ago. Please pass it on.