Question

From what I understand I can have a type Foo automatically cast itself to an int when it is passed to a method expecting an int. Can I also do the other direction? i.e. have an int implicitly cast itself to Foo and have this definition also be in foo?

My understanding may be incorrect.

Answer 1

You can.

class Foo
{
    public Foo(int value)
    { 
        this.Value = value; 
    }

    public int Value { get; set; }

    // ImplicitSample -> int
    public static implicit operator int(Foo input)
    {
        return input.Value;
    }

    //  string -> ImplicitSample
    public static implicit operator Foo(int input)
    {
        return new Foo(input);
    }
}

The sample in this article will show it better then i can explain:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/z5z9kes2.aspx