Question

I have a char type column in table. I want to convert it to a char in C#.
It is working by

char gender = Convert.ToChar(dataRow["Gender"]);

But it failed

 char gender = (char)(dataRow["Gender"]);

If a column is int type. I can use (int) to cast an object.
Why it failed on char(exception)?

InValidCastException.

Thanks,

Answer 1

The datarow[column] is an expression of type ‘object’

The Convert.ToChar() method has an overload that takes an object as argument, so the compiler knows what to do.

The (char)dataRow[column] is an explicit cast of dataRow[column] to the char type, but an automatic conversion from object to char doesn’t exist