C#, cast variable to Enum.GetUnderlyingType

Question

Suppose I have enum, which underlying type is byte:

enum EmpType : byte
{
    Manager = 1,
    Worker = 2,
}

Can I cast some int literal to underlying type of this enum(byte in this case) ?

Something like this doesn't work (Error: "; expected"):

byte x = (Enum.GetUnderlyingType(typeof(EmpType)))15;

Can I cast to underlying type without explicitly writing (byte)15 ?

Thanks.

This question makes no sense to me;. What are you trying to achieve with this shenanigan? — Pieter Geerkens
– Pieter Geerkens, Commented May 7, 2013 at 3:53
Enum.GetUnderlyingType returns a Type. So this is trying to cast 15 to class Type — Steven Wexler
– Steven Wexler, Commented May 7, 2013 at 3:53
@PieterGeerkens: He wants to do a cast to a type that is the underlying type of an enum, without having to specify again what that type is. — Patashu
– Patashu, Commented May 7, 2013 at 3:54
@Patashu: That's rather obvious. The question is why, because this is more a solution looking for a problem than a true problem. And what on earth id the point of attempting to cast 15 to an enum with values ranging from 1 to 2? — Pieter Geerkens
– Pieter Geerkens, Commented May 7, 2013 at 3:56
@Pieter Geerkens: This was just a theoretical question. I'm not going to implement it in real code. Just was wondering how to do that. And by the way, I'm not casting 15 to enum values of 1 or 2, I'm trying to cast to byte value. — Aremyst
– Aremyst, Commented May 7, 2013 at 4:09

Steven Wexler · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-07 03:56:40Z

6

I think the following will work. But I'm not sure it will get you the desired behavior in all cases.

var x = Convert.ChangeType(15, Enum.GetUnderlyingType(typeof(EmpType)))

answered May 7, 2013 at 3:56

Steven Wexler

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3 Comments

Steven Wexler Over a year ago

Glad to help! But be careful with it. It's pretty odd.

joakimriedel Over a year ago

Even now in the future I found this very useful in a generic helper method that enumerates all flags in an enum, optionally retrieving the value of the underlying type.

M-Pixel Over a year ago

Here's another valid and reasonable application: Treating enums as their underlying types in a switch statement that takes an object and has switch-on-type style cases.

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:53:03Z

0

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to do. Below is a related question about casting ints to enums and vice-versa, the same applies to byte in this case.

Is it possible to cast integer to enum?

If you want to detect the underlying type at run-time... it seems awkward and a lot of work. You could just do a case statement based upon the name of the underlying type. I'm not sure what good it would do you due to type safety concerns.

edited May 23, 2017 at 11:53

CommunityBot

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answered May 7, 2013 at 3:57

David Cummins

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