I’m asked a lot of questions about conversion logic in C#, which is not that surprising. Conversions are common, and the rules are pretty complicated. Here’s some code I was asked about recently; I’ve stripped it down to its essence for clarity:

class C<T> {} 
class D 
{
  public static C<U> M<U>(C<bool> c)   
  { return =something=; } 
} 
public static class X 
{ 
  public static V Cast<V>(object obj) 
  { return (V)obj; } 
}

where there are three possible texts for “=something=“:

1. (C<U>)c
2. X.Cast<C<U>>(c);
3. (C<U>)(object)c

Version 1 fails at compile time. Versions 2 and 3 succeed at compile time, and then fail at runtime if U is not bool.

Question: Why does the first version fail at compile time?

Because the compiler knows that the only way this conversion could possibly succeed is if U is bool, but U can be anything! The compiler assumes that most of the time U is not going to be constructed with bool, and therefore this code is almost certainly an error, and the compiler is bringing that fact to your attention.

Question: Then why does the second version succeed at compile time?

Because the compiler has no idea that a method named X.Cast<V> is going to perform a cast to V! All the compiler sees is a call to a method that takes an object, and you’ve given it an object, so the compiler’s work is done. The method is a “black box” from the caller’s perspective; the compiler does not look inside that box to see whether the mechanisms in that box are likely to fail given the input. This “cast” is not really a cast from the compiler’s perspective, it’s a method call.

Question: So what about the third version? Why does it not fail like the first version?

This one is actually the same thing as the second version; all we’ve done is inlined the body of the call to X.Cast<V>, including the intermediate conversion to object! That conversion is relevant.

Question: In both the second and third cases, the conversion succeeds at compile time because there is a conversion to object in the middle?

That’s right. The rule is: if there is a conversion from a type S to object, then there is an explicit conversion from object to S.[1. Of course it is not the case that there is a conversion from every type to object. There is no conversion from any pointer type to object, from the void return type to object, and there are also some special “typed reference” helper types that cannot be converted to object. Maybe I’ll discuss those in another episode of FAIC.]

By making a conversion to object before doing the “offensive” conversion, you are basically telling the compiler “please throw away the compile-time information you have about the type of the thing I am converting”. In the third version we do so explicitly; in the second version we do so sneakily, by making an implicit conversion to object when the argument is converted to the parameter type.

Question: So this explains why compile-time type checking doesn’t seem to work quite right on LINQ expressions?

Yes! You would think that the compiler would disallow nonsense like:

from bool b in new int[] { 123, 345 } select b.ToString()

because obviously there is no conversion from int to bool, so how can range variable b take on the values in the array? Nevertheless, this succeeds because the compiler translates this to

(new int[] { 123, 345 }).Cast<bool>().Select(b=>b.ToString())

and the compiler has no idea that passing a sequence of integers to the extension method Cast<bool> is going to fail at runtime. That method is a black box. You and I know that it is going to perform a cast, and that the cast is going to fail, but the compiler does not know that.

And maybe we do not actually know it either; perhaps we are using some library other than the default LINQ-to-objects query provider that does know how to make conversions between types that the C# language would not normally allow. This is actually an extensibility feature masquerading as a compiler deficiency: it’s not a bug, it’s a feature! [2. My glib statement here conveniently ignores that this method had quite a nasty bug in its initial release, a bug that was mostly my fault. Late in the game before the release one of the developers changed the implementation of the extension method so that it allowed more conversions than were specified, as a convenience to users. I reviewed the change while under the incorrect impression that the implemented behaviour was the specified behaviour. It was not, and the implementation was quite slow in a common code path. We took a breaking change in a service pack as a result. The cost of breaking a few people who might have been relying on the unintended behaviour was considered to be low compared to the cost to everyone of the slow implementation. This was a tough, controversial call but I think we did the right thing in the end. I regret the error.]

Next time on FAIC: Should C# warn on null dereferences known to the compiler?