Casting: (NewType) vs. Object as NewType *

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Casting vs using the 'as' keyword in the CLR

What is actually the difference between these two casts?

SomeClass sc = (SomeClass)SomeObject;
SomeClass sc2 = SomeObject as SomeClass;

Normally, they should both be explicit casts to the specified type?

Answer

The former will throw an exception if the source type can't be cast to the target type. The latter will result in sc2 being a null reference, but no exception.

[Edit]

My original answer is certainly the most pronounced difference, but as Eric Lippert points out, it's not the only one. Other differences include:

• You can't use the 'as' operator to cast to a type that doesn't accept 'null' as a value
• You can't use 'as' to convert things, like numbers to a different representation (float to int, for example).

And finally, using 'as' vs. the cast operator, you're also saying "I'm not sure if this will succeed."

< br > via < a class="StackLink" href=" http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2483/" >Casting: (NewType) vs. Object as NewType< /a>

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